6
Communicate God’s Word
Question 1:
What’s something you often find yourself telling others about?
THE POINT
Knowledge of God’s Word should not be kept to yourself; pass it on.
THE BIBLE MEETS LIFE
I frequently must fly, so I am accustomed to hearing a flight attendant give the pre-flight rundown. Anyone who has flown has heard a flight attendant give the flight itinerary, go through all the safety features of the aircraft, and instruct you to fasten your seatbelt. The attendant will also tell you what to do in case of a change in cabin pressure. In that unlikely event, face masks will descend from the cargo space above. You are first to affix your own mask before helping others with theirs. The lesson is simple: you can’t help others very well if you haven’t taken care of yourself first.
This is a helpful picture of what’s involved in telling others about God’s Word. We all know others who could use a healthy dose of Scripture, but we can’t help others very well if we haven’t taken care of ourselves first. But as we take in God’s Word, we can share its truth with others. In fact, as we consume a healthy diet of Scripture and grow from it, we’re eager to share it with others.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?
Deuteronomy 6:1-3
1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
Forty years earlier, God had miraculously rescued the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. He gave them incredible promises, including a promise to return to and inhabit the land promised to Abraham. He also gave them His commands—commands to obey His way of holiness and commands to trust His incredible promises. Yet during their forty years in the wilderness, Israel often failed to obey and trust. Each time Israel failed, God extended grace and mercy. A constant source of Israel’s disobedience and distrust was a fundamental struggle to believe that God’s way was best or that God would do what He promised. In Deuteronomy 6, Moses sought to motivate the Israelites to understand the benefit of obeying God’s Word.
Question 2:
How has someone else benefited from someone sharing God’s Word with you?
Thousands of years later, there is still great benefit in obeying God’s Word. The point of Moses’s words in this passage are clear: follow the commands of Scripture. Moses shows us a three-fold benefit to obeying God’s Word.
- Obedience leads us to fear God. Moses said to obey God’s Word “so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live” (v. 2). The phrase fear the Lord means “reverence.” God’s Word reveals who He is, and as we follow all we learn about Him, we revere Him. Fear, then, is wise behavior.
- Obedience leads to God’s blessing on our lives. Moses said to keep all God’s “decrees and commands … so that you may enjoy long life … so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly,” and because God “promised you … a land flowing with milk and honey.” For Israel, God’s blessings were both spiritual and physical. Whether or not we sense God’s physical blessing, we are blessed spiritually. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph. 1:3).
- Obedience leads to God’s blessing for others. Moses intended the Israelites to pass on God’s promises to the generations after them. Here we learn an important truth: God never intends His blessings to stop with us. In whatever way He has blessed us, He desires for us to bless others. And there is no better way to bless others than to put God’s Word on display through our own obedience. Our own obedience can motivate others to embrace Jesus Christ and follow Him in obedience.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
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.
As we’ve already noted, a constant source of Israel’s disobedience and distrust was a fundamental struggle to believe that God’s way was best or that God would do what He promised. The tension between Israel’s failures and God’s faithfulness fostered a roller-coaster relationship between the Israelites and God. But God in His mercy and faithfulness would not let go of His people.
We also may struggle to trust God’s promises or obey His commands. We too can easily find ourselves at a crossroads of belief. Thankfully, just as God mercifully held Israel, so He continually showers His grace upon those of us who believe Jesus’s gospel. It’s here that we find our ultimate motivation to continue trusting and obeying. God holds firmly to us, so we hold firmly to Him. God’s love relentlessly pursues us, so we lovingly chase after Him. His love for us propels our love for Him. And our love for Him compels our trust and obedience.
Deuteronomy 6:4-6 is considered one of the most important passages in the Bible. These verses are called the Shema from the Hebrew word for hear, which is the first word in this passage. When Moses began verse 4 by saying, “Hear, O Israel,” he underscored the importance these words carried. By Jesus’s time, faithful Jews recited this passage multiple times per day.
Today, we can find motivation to trust and obey God in the Shema. In these verses, Moses provided examples of orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right living).
- Orthodoxy. Moses reminded the people of just who their God is. He wasn’t like the pagan gods of the polytheistic Canaanites in the land the Israelites were about to possess. Instead, “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (v. 4). In one simple sentence, Moses defined proper orthodoxy (right belief). Moses highlighted God’s unity and His exclusivity.
- Orthopraxy. Moses also shows us orthopraxy (right living). In verse 5, we find the only fitting response to who God is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Love is to be our response to who God is; love for Him is to consume our whole being.
Every domain of life now becomes an opportunity for worship through trust and obedience, and it is this love and devotion that compels us to trust and obey Him.
Question 3:
What are some ways you demonstrate your love for God?
Deuteronomy 6:6-9
6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Even as Jesus affirmed the Shema as the greatest commandment, he added a second one like it. He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). As we learn the benefits of God’s Word for ourselves, we should want others to experience those divine benefits too. If love for God compels us to trust and obey His Word, then love for others compels us to share His Word at every opportunity.
In order to communicate God’s Word effectively, Moses said these words “are to be on your hearts” (v. 6). Simply stated, we should have a heart that beats for God’s Word. This underscores the value of memorizing Scripture. “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11). The more of God’s Word that resides in our hearts, the more others will hear His Word coming from our mouths.
Question 4:
Why do some people find sharing about God so difficult?
We must remember the heart of Moses’s words: we are to love God with every part of our being and share God’s Word in every part of our lives. Wherever we go is an opportunity to communicate God’s Word to everyone. Consider the following ways you might apply these truths.
- Identify key Scripture verses, write or print them out, and place them in strategic areas around your home.
- Share an encouraging Scripture verse with a cashier, a waiter, or a hairdresser.
- Ask some friends to read the Bible with you. Select 3-4 others — and include an unbeliever — to join you.
Sin has left people desperate and hungry. You and I have God’s Word at our disposal—and we have it in abundance. We’ve been well-fed. Let’s help others find the sustenance they are yearning to find. His love compels us.
Question 5:
How can we practically impact our home and community with God’s Word?
SHARING THE TRUTH
Where do you have opportunities to teach or promote the truths of God’s Word? Use the categories from verses 7–9 to identify opportunities in today’s world for talking about Scripture.
How can you promote the truth of Scripture …
When you sit in your house:
When you walk along the road:
When you lie down:
When you get up:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”
ROMANS 1:16
LIVE IT OUT
You can communicate God’s Word in numerous ways. Choose one of the following applications:
Inward communication. Are you anxious in a particular area? Struggling with a specific sin? Or do you perhaps need to remember one of God’s promises? Identify a relevant Scripture verse, write it down, and take it with you wherever you go this week.
Upward communication. As you read the Bible regularly, combine your Scripture-intake with prayer. Incorporate the words of Scripture into your prayers. As you do this, you will learn how to communicate God’s Word back to Him as worship.
Outward communication. Ask some friends to read the Bible with you or to join you for Bible study.
Remember the lesson of the flight attendant instruction? Let’s love God by applying His Word to our lives. And let’s love others by showing them how to do the same!
Teacher's Notes:
Click Play to Watch
College. Job. Marriage. House. Kids.
Comfortable income. Retire.
John Piper warns of the temptation of wasting
our lives on our own version of a flashy thing with shiny ribbons on it and
being hooked into missing the greater purpose that God has for our lives.
He highlights a story from Readers Digest about a couple who the world might
describe as living the American Dream, but Piper calls it a “tragedy.”
“Their names are Bob and Penny . . . they took
early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59
and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on
their thirty-foot trawler, playing softball and collecting shells.”
Piper says, “People today are spending billions
of dollars to persuade you to embrace this tragic dream. Don’t buy it. With all
my heart, Piper says - I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American
Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting
shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe
to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection! Oh…and
look at my boat!” Piper ends with, “Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.”
Is the “American Dream” a wasted life?
The American Dream beckons people to spend
their lives on trivial diversions, slipping through life caught up with seeking
success, comfort, and pleasure above all else. But God designed people for far
more than this.
What are we teaching our children?
“I am wired by nature to love the same toys
that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I
start to call earth "home." Before you know it, I am calling luxuries
"needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to
forget the war. I don't think much about people perishing. Missions and
unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of
grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not
what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have
forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.” - John
Piper, Don't Waste Your Life
God’s Word is a treasure, but it is not
something to be kept to ourselves. All that we have learned in the previous
five lessons on building our lives on God’s Word brings us to this final truth.
Knowledge of God’s Word should not be kept to
yourself; pass it on.
Moses gives us the foundation of God’s “World
Dream” this morning!
Deuteronomy 6:1-3
These are the commands, decrees and laws the
Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are
crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long
as you live by keeping all his
decrees and commands that I give
you, and so that you may
enjoy long life. Hear, Israel,
and be careful to obey so that it may
go well with you and that you may
increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the
God of your ancestors, promised you.
What is the context of this passage – what is
getting ready to happen? Why is Moses saying all of this?
Moses’s farewell treatise to the people who finally
were about to enter the land of promise. The book was intended to provide
guidelines to this covenant community for living obediently before God and to
prepare them to live as His people in the land.
Forty years earlier, God had miraculously
rescued the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. He gave them incredible promises,
including a promise to return to and inhabit the land promised to Abraham. He also gave them His commands — commands to obey His way and to trust His incredible promises. Yet during their forty years in the
wilderness, Israel often failed to obey and trust. Each time Israel failed, God
extended grace and mercy. A constant
source of Israel’s disobedience and distrust was a fundamental struggle to
believe that God’s way was best or that God would do what He promised.
God’s purpose, plan, and
promise to the people would come as they trusted and obeyed Him.
How does this relate to us today? What is our
fundamental struggle with obedience?
Andy says that “wrong ideas come packaged in
so much glitter, it’s hard to convince them that other things might be better
in the long run” and “All a parent can do is say wait – trust me and try and
keep temptation away.”
I.
Obedience Brings
Blessing and Joy
We’re immersed in a culture where people want
to live by their own rules — or ignore rules all together. They want to live by
their own way not God’s way. That’s sad because they don’t realize that the
rules — the commands — God has given in His Word are for our benefit. Yes, they
keep us from harm, but I’ve discovered that, when I follow His rules, life is more enjoyable.
(Personal experience in the last 2 years)
We miss out on the abundant life Christ intended
when we fail to follow the rules. If you want to know joy and abundance, live
in obedience to what you discover in the pages of God’s Word.
How is this a generational blessing?
Deuteronomy 6:4-6 is considered one of the most
important passages in the Bible. These verses are called the Shema from the
Hebrew word for - hear.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is
one. (Orthodoxy – Right Belief) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your strength. (Orthopraxy – Right Living)
These commandments that I give you today are to
be on your hearts. Impress
them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along
the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your
hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
II.
Obedience
Blesses Us and Others – If we pass it on!
What does loving God with all our heart, soul,
and strength look like?
Does the American Dream look like this?
Jesus affirmed the Shema
as the greatest commandment, and then He added a second one like it. “Love your
neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39). As we learn the blessings of God’s Word for
ourselves, we should want others to experience those divine blessings too.
How are we to Communicate God’s Word?
What responsibility do parents have in
relationship to their children concerning the Word of the Lord?
What are we teaching our children?
Remember, if you don’t teach your children to love
God, the world will teach them not to.
How do we display our love for God?
Display your love for God.
You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and
they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Jewish families often place a mezuzah at the entryway of their
homes. It is a small case, usually made of metal or wood containing these very
words from Deuteronomy on the inside. That is a strong display that says,
"God is honored in this home."
Growing up, my mom had a picture that had Psalm 118:24 stitched
into it, "This is the day the Lord
has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." Of course, we had many days when we weren't always
rejoicing, but many days we were. That simple picture served as a visual
reminder that we can rejoice in the Lord always and that He is in control each
day.
What is Responsive Stewardship?
Recognizing God’s ownership of all of life and
living in a responsive posture before the Spirit with everything God has placed
in our hands (time, talent, treasure, relationships, etc.) to carry out His
purposes for our lives and the world.
1 Corinthians 10:31 - So, whether you eat or
drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Colossians 3:23-24 - Whatever you do, work
heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will
receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Romans 11:36 - For from him and through him and
to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
1 Peter 4:11 - whoever speaks, as one who
speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that
God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus
Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever.
Rick Warren Purpose Driven Life - We are here
to serve the Lord - God wants to use us for His glory. We are here to serve the
God who created us. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua
24:15). You were made by God, and for God. Until you understand that, your life
will never make sense. You’ve got to start with God. The only way to know the
purpose for your life — why you’re here on this planet, and what on earth
you’re here for — is to talk to your Creator, God, and to read his Word, the
Bible.
There’s almost nothing that God won’t do for
the person who wants to help other people. Your spiritual gifts were not given
for your benefit but for the benefit of others. God blesses you to be a
blessing to others.
What does the Bible say about the American
dream?
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on
earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But
store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not
destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21 NIV)
Command those who are rich in this present
world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so
uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything
for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be
generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure
for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take
hold of the life that is truly life. (1 Timothy 6: 17-19 NIV)
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused
to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along
with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He
regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures
of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. (Hebrews 11:24-26)
Conclusion
The Word of God should be the driving force
influencing all we do and who we are. Parents have a responsibility to teach
the Word of God to their children. Believers have a responsibility to always
share the Word of God with all people in all settings.
Moses said: We are to love God with every part
of our being and share God’s Word in every part of our lives.
