DT 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
I preached on this last Saturday. And it is also another of our favourite verses for recitation in Hebrew.
It's amazing how much you can get out of just these couple of verses.
Firstly the Lord OUR God - speaks of a personal God. Note that the pronoun is changed to "you" in the next line. And even then the "you" is singular - addressing the individual.
Secondly, the LORD is one - speaks of an all-sufficient God. No need to run to various idols, for different needs. It's all under one roof, people. One -stop shopping?? (Singaporeans rejoice!)
Thirdly, the word for "love" is written in command form - same as for the 10 commandments. Yet the writer did not use the imperative. How on earth do you stick a gun to someone's temple and say "Love me.."?
But what really gets me is the last part - with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Now it is very easy for us to get distracted by the meaning of heart, soul and strength, as many have attempted to dissect and expound upon ad infinitum (and ad nauseum, if I may add). But the entire emphasis of this is upon the ALL, which the English translation does try to bring out in the tireless repetition of the word. In fact the word for "strength" is actually "me'odeka". "Me'od" means "very" as in "very good". Now how do you translate that? "With all your very-ness"???? Or, as my lecturer has suggested, "with all your muchness"!!!!
I reently sat in as a judge for a cheerdance competition, and was vastly impressed by the enthusiasm and the very "extra"ness of the dancers. Shouting and moving to the beat and cheers, they put in their ALL. That seems to be best example I can think of to illustrate "with all your muchness". Unfortunately, it is taken not from a Christian context, and I ask myself, why?
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A hearty agreement.
ReplyDeleteHow did the preaching itself go?
Hi Mrs Wong,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, let me clarify, Hannah passed me your blog link so don't worry, i'm not stalking you or anything.
Next, I have to totally agree with your excellent and very personal discourse of one of the most important and often quoted scriptures. It really does bring to mind the whole idea of how love isn't a feeling or an emotion but a whole hearted commitment to someone; in this obvious case, God.
This verse does show us the personal nature of God and how He has always wanted us to relate to Him as HIS people and He, our God. With that in mind, observing the last part of that verse makes perfect sense. If He is our God and we are His children, then love should be the natural flow... and not just love but whole hearted love.
With ALL your heart, all your soul, all your strength... i love how you pointed out the repetition of the word All.. but i also have to say that 'all' is more than we often think it is... all signifies 100%, not 99%. It reminded me of the verse in Luke 14:26 where Jesus says that he who loves his father more than Him cannot be His disciple... it's all about the heart. The whole heart issue permeates through the bible and if you're half hearted, God will spit you out of his mouth like vomit.
What I'm trying to remind myself about is that God wants our whole heart and not part of it. Once we set something above God, even if it is the actual doing of the work of God, then we idolize it and God isn't our true love anymore.
Thanks for the very thought-provoking and clear explanation of your sermon. Loved it! Great reminder to myself too about how I should never put God second. Looking forward to reading more from you!
Wow - I'm glad you enjoyed reading this, Joel. I'm encouraged by your input too. Now lies the great challenge - putting what we learn into practice. So many times we mortals give the lame excuse that love is a feeling - it can't be forced. But God has shown us that it is also very much an act of the will. Are we willing? If the answer is 'yes', then God will honour by providing the way.
ReplyDeleteI just read two (apparently) contradicting things that I have yet to reconcile: one is the assertion that love for God is a decision and not a feeling, much like how one's choice to stay with a spouse out of faithfulness (despite the loss of feeling) is actually true love; the other is an article that noted how without true emotion, worship to God ultimately is not complete, not whole, and possibly not true.
ReplyDeleteSo how? :S
Oh, Harper is me...
ReplyDelete-- Chris
with ref. to chris, ok this doesn't have much biblical ref. to back it up, but I'm gonna say it anyway...
ReplyDeleteI've learnt(either from my mum or from my grandma) that you still worship God despite of your mood that day. Even if you don't have the "feeling" to worship and praise him, you still do it because you love him. This probably ties to your first point. But as a personal experience, once you force yourself to worship and chuck all your worries/thoughts one side, you feel something.. and emotion that makes you want to worship more and more. So I guess the statement from the article is also true.. it's just at matter of sequence.
does it sound logical?
I think I have to agree with Ballerina [grinz] and Chris that loving God isn't a feeling or emotion... it's not sumthing that u do because of a feeling but it's a choice that u make. It's a stand up and shout it kind of thing where u make a stand and say, I want to Love God... not coz i FEEL like it... but coz i want to and i choose to. much like baptism.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet when u DO worship God... if u don't worship Him in spirit and in truth, in whole heartedness and devotion, then it's not true worship either. What the article is talking about is whether you're worshipping God with feeling [devotion and commitment] rather than spewing vain uttering at the street corner like the Pharisees did.
So when you worship God, you praise Him because you choose to and when you praise Him, you praise Him in truth when you mean what you say and say what you mean. Once again, it's the heart issue. Are our motivations right? Are our intentions right and when we worship God, do we worship God or do we sing songs that have the word God in them?
Possibly?
It's interesting reading all the responses. Yeah Chris - good point you brought up. I think pretty well developed by all. Love - emotion or intention.......or both?
ReplyDeleteGoing to be a systematic theologian here and suggest a definition for love...
ReplyDeleteThe more I read on the Trinity, I have come to conclude that love is ultimately the giving of the self. The Father loves the Son, and so gives of Himself (in the Person of the Spirit) to the Son, and the Son, in loving response, through the Spirit, offers Himself as an atoning sacrifice in faithful obedience to the Father. God so loved the world He gave Himself - Father, Son, Spirit.
Why I am bringing this up now is because when we are talking about worship, we are really talking about an act and response of love to God. So the real question is: can one offer up one's self, one's life, one's direction, etc. to God without emotion? If so, is it legitimate?
Well, well...I can't get past this one right now...more thinking is in order here...
Hi Auntie Rina~!
ReplyDeleteLydia hereee...eh.I found your blog link in Hannah's blog. =D Its cool that you're blogging. its even cooler that what you're blogging is thought provoking! =D
Im not one for theologic debates, but why make things so confusing.. lets love like we know how to love. We were created in the beginning for fellowship and a relationship with God, who knows better than each one of us, how to love God like only each of us individually can. To love like how God calls us to, individually. And to love with 'much-ness'!! I love that word =D =D
yay, auntie Rina! =D
Hi Lydia,
ReplyDeleteThat does sound good and promising...but the problem is that to speak of a state of "knowing how to love" is to assume that our ability to love is stable, constant and of a consistent capacity. Which is simply not true. Any one who has been married will testify to that. Our ability to love often fluctuates, is threatened under certain circumstances and even our capacity to love sometimes gets very low.
Looking at such marriages in real life will drive this point home. I have heard of some spouses mention how they lost all their feeling and affection for their partners, but they still chose to stay on in the marriage based on a hard-headed, emotionless decision to love without feeling. But can you imagine what kind of life that is? Can you imagine giving your body again and again to someone who you have lost all feeling for because it's the right (loving) thing to do?
Hearing their stories makes me raise such questions: what really is love? Is love any less legitimate because it lacks feeling? Is this - no emotion, just giving yourself because it is 'right' - really what love is supposed to look like?
And I can see the relation to worship of the One God. Worship is supposed to be an act of loving Him "with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind and with all my strength"...it means the totality of the person has to be involved in loving God. But what if my emotions to God are dead, just like those spouses who now feel nothing for their partners? How am I giving "muchness" when I can't give God my emotions? Is it any less love, and thus, any less worship?
The question is: what really constitutes loving God when love is itself so inconsistent and unstable?
It is complicated because humans Are and Life Is (complicated), whether we acknowledge it or not.