The Bible is clear enough to understand and build our life upon.

Dominus sit in corde meo et in labiis meis: ut digne et competenter annuntiem Evangelium suum.

Did you guys catch that? I could say it again if it would help. That was a traditional Latin phrase that was meant to be spoken before reading the gospel in church, it means ““May the Lord be in my heart and on my lips, that I may worthily and fittingly proclaim His Gospel.” And without the translation it was meaningless to me. And it was meaningless to you too. But man it sounds nice. If you want an environment to feel religious and somber and beautiful all at the same time, start reading things out loud in Latin and it all hits you. It also sounds kind of powerful. That’s why in the movies when someone has to perform an exorcism they always speak it in Latin.

And this was a commonly held belief in the middle ages. The peasants didn’t understand Latin, but they still memorized prayers in Latin because they thought God would hear them better. It’s as if the words themselves at some sort of magical or divine power. Christians today might do this too. We think maybe if I get that verse of the day to pop in the middle of my breakfast I’ll have a good day. I don’t have to really understand it or spend time thinking about it. Just having it pop up should be enough. And when I have bad days! It’s probably because I forgot to check my phone.

God’s Words aren’t magic. They aren’t a talisman to ward off evil. They are meant to be understood. They are written in a way that can be understood. And in a way that we can build our life upon. We call it clarity. And that’s our topic today.

Main Point – The Bible is clear enough to understand and build our life upon.

Text – Deut. 6:1-9 - page 142

Point #1 – Love is the Bible’s clear command (vs. 1, 4-5)

Let me start by telling you how much I hesitated to make this my first point. This is simply because the word “love” is so ambiguous in our culture. It doesn’t help that the English language is very limited in its vocabulary surrounding love. “I love my wife” and “I love KitKats” but those two are clearly not the same. “I love God” and “I love watching movies”. “Love” means everything and it means nothing all at the same time. So to say that Love is the Bible’s clear message might not mean anything at all. But let me show you why I think this is important.

Let me set the context for our passage. Do you remember how last week I described the scene at Mt. Sinai where God spoke the 10 commandments to the people? He speaks from the mountain and they are terrified. They tell Moses, “You talk to him and tell us what he wants and whatever he says we’ll do”. So Moses comes back to the people and he says let me tell you the “whole commandment” the statutes and the rules. He’s saying, “Let me start by summarizing what this entire thing is about.” And that’s where our passage picks up.

Vs. 1 - “This is the commandment” singular “the statutes and the rules” plural. I’m going to share with you one thing that is the point of everything else I’ve told you. Do you remember those rules I gave you about sacrificing goats? Do you remember those rules I gave you about giving your firstfruits to the priests? Do you remember those rules about caring for the sojourners? Do you remember those laws about purifying yourself? All of those things, every one of them can be summarized in this one statement that I’m about to give you.

In fact, if you intend to live a long life, if you intend to receive the blessings that God has promised you, if you intend to grow as a nation, it will all hinge on whether or not you can keep this one law!

You can imagine that the people are almost salivating at this point. They’re on the edge of their seats. Tell us! What is it? What is the one thing that we have to do?

And finally he gets to vs. 4-5 - Hear O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

That’s it. That’s the one commandment. The Jews have taken this commandment and have made it central to their theology. They call this commandment the “Shema” because in Hebrew the first word is “Shema” it’s the one that means hear or obey. And the reason it is so central is because every other statute and rule falls under this command.

It’s like they have one agreed upon purpose and they’re reminding themselves why they’re doing all of these other things. I’ve discovered that roughly 50% of our congregation has been a football coach at some point in their life, so let me share with you a rough football analogy. When your boys show up for practice, you have them run laps. Coach why are we running laps? Because we want to win the game on Friday. You have them practice running routes. Coach why are we running routes? We’re not even holding a ball? Because we want to win the game on Friday. Coach why do we have to do stretches every day? Because we want to win the game on Friday. Why are you telling us what we are allowed to eat? Why are you having us stare at a playbook and memorize plays? Why are we exhausting ourselves for hours every day and putting our bodies through so much pain? Because we want to win the game on Friday!

And this is commandment, this Shema, is the reason why those who love God’s Word do everything that it commands, because we want to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might. Why do we show up for church on Sundays? Because we want to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might. Why do we give money to the church? Because we want to love the Lord our God with all of our heart soul and might. Why do we privately lead our families in prayer and Bible reading? Because we want to love the Lord our God with all our heart soul and might. Why do sacrifice our own desires for the sake of caring for our spouse? Why do we risk embarrassment by speaking of Christ in public? Why am I to be content with Christ in my singleness? Why do we love those who are unlike us and make us uncomfortable? Because we want to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might.

And this is why it tells us to put these words everywhere in verses 7-8. “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.” It should be the command we remember when we’re at home and when we’re at work. It should be on our mind when we’re busy and when we’re resting. Look, if you don’t actively remind yourself that you are doing these things because you want to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might, then you will forget what the point of it all is. You’ll quit halfway through. You won’t persevere. You won’t be faithful until the end. You won’t care about the things that this book says.

Earlier I mentioned that the word “love” is a confusing word, but here it means that we have a singular focus on obeying God’s commands and having our hearts inclined towards him above all other things.

This is the one very clear goal of Scripture. We don’t have to guess what God wants us to do. The Bible is clear. This book and all the individual parts of it are telling you how to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and might.

Of course you might object, yes, the overall message of the Bible is clear but when you actually open it and look at the parts individually it’s too complicated. Only people who have a special degree or who have studied Greek and Hebrew can really understand it. I’m just a simple man or a simple woman and most of the stuff in here is too hard.

Point #2 – Everyone is the Bible’s clear audience (vs. 2, 7)

It’s important to recognize in our passage, who does God say his Word is for? Twice he says, “Hear O Israel” in vs 3 and again in verse 4. He’s talking to all of the nation of Israel. He’s not talking simply to the priests. He’s not talking exclusively to the elders. He says all of Israel. That means mom, dad, son, daughter, grandma, grandpa, priest, farmer, scribe, soldier, healthy, sick, educated, less educated, and so on. And to make his point explicitly clear, he mentions children specifically.

Look at verse 2 - I want “you and your son and your son’s son” to keep all his statutes and commands. Every generation is responsible for loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. Then look at verse 7, “You shall teach them diligently to your children…” It couldn’t be more clear, that God’s Word and his commands can be understood by children. And God wants even children to be taught God’s Word and to obey it.

This notion that it’s too difficult for everyday people to understand God’s Word is by no means new. It has deep roots that stretch back several centuries. In the early 1500’s, the Bible was only available in Latin. This was of course a big problem because only scholars could understand Latin. But that didn’t stop the Catholic Church from demanding the Latin Bible be the only one read by priests in churches. Similar to how we opened today’s message, no one, not even the priests most of the time, had a clue what was being said. But the reason it persisted was because the Church was convinced that the Bible was too complicated and hard for simple people to understand. If anyone was going to interpret it and tell you what it meant, it was going to have to be the scholarly minds of the church. This was the policy in all of Europe and so this was also the policy in England.

Enter a man named William Tyndale. In 1522, Tyndale was one of the scholars who could understand Latin and as a rarity he could also read and understand Greek. He started to compare the Latin Bible with the original Greek and see how the current Bible had inaccuracies and mistakes. In talking with other church scholars, he was surprised to find that most of them didn’t know the Bible very well at all. One of them even told Tyndale, “I’d rather be without God’s law than without the pope’s law.” This set Tyndale on a mission. He was going to be certain that the English speaking people could have access to God’s word for themselves, that their was no ruling class or academic or political power that could keep God’s Word away from the people. In response to this Catholic scholar, Tyndale famously said, “I defy the Pope and all his laws… If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”

And Tyndale kept that promise. Over the course of the next 14 years of his life, he worked tirelessly to produce an accurate English Bible. He completed the New Testament and had it printed and distributed all throughout England. Meanwhile the Catholic Church was seeking to kill him. It was church policy that stated anyone in possession of an English Bible was to be punished by burning at the stake. Tyndale continued to work while in hiding, but many of his friends and his coworkers were caught and killed. Those who printed his Bibles were burned at the stake. Those who delivered them were also murdered. There are even records of people who taught their children the Lord’s Prayer in English being burned at the stake. And eventually his pursuers caught up with him. Tyndale was betrayed by a friend and he himself was also burned at the stake. At 42 years old, William Tyndale was tied to an upright piece of wood and set on fire. His last words were, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes”

And God answered that prayer. Less than a century later, the “authorized” version of the Bible known as the King James Bible was commissioned by the king of England himself. 90% of the King James Bible was just Tyndale’s work verbatim. A mortal battle was waged and so many lives were taken by those who would withhold the Bible from the common people because they were told “The Bible is too complicated for you”. And sadly now, so many of us let the beautiful Bible sit on our shelves and collect dust and we withhold it from ourselves saying, “The Bible is too complicated for me.”

Our passage wages war against that kind of thinking. It says God’s Word is for everyone. It is for scholars. It is for adults. It is for children. And it is for you. The saints that went before us were persecuted and beaten and killed so that this book could be in our hands. And too often we think, “Reading it for myself seems like a lot of work. I’ll let someone else tell me what it means.” Friends, the Bible is not only for some people. The Bible is for everyone.

That’s why I want us to be looking at the Bible together in this service. Don’t just take my word for it. Open the Bible and look at it for yourself. That’s why we’re spending time on Wednesday nights looking directly at the Word and seeing what is says. That’s why I want to read the Bible when I visit our shut-ins. I want to teach the Bible to our children as soon as possible. I also want them to read it for themselves. 3 out of my 4 boys have learned to read so far and when they did Silvi and I bought them a Bible. We gave it to them and said, “The reason we taught you how to read was so that you could read this book. Nothing else is as important as reading this book” The Bible is for everyone.

So Love is the Bible’s clear command. And everyone is the Bible’s clear audience. But even when we know that it’s not enough to drive us into God’s Word. We need something additional.

Point #3 – A new heart is the Bible’s clear hope

It’s entirely possible that you will sit through this message and agree with me intellectually. Yes, the Bible is very clear in what it teaches. Yes, the Bible is clear enough to be understood by everyone. And yet, tomorrow you will make it through your whole day without cracking the Bible open. You won’t read it with your family. Perhaps, you will make it all the way until you come back here next Sunday without opening God’s Word at all. Why? How is that possible? Do I need to come up with some other more convincing argument that the Bible is meant to be read? No. I don’t think we need more arguments. I don’t think threats will help. I don’t think heaving an enormous amount of guilt on your heads will help. What each of us needs is a new heart, a heart that loves God’s Word.

A heart inclined towards God is a major theme in this book of Deuteronomy. Look a few verses above our passage at Deuteronomy 5:29. The people of Israel said, “Everything God speaks to us we will hear and do it.” And God’s reply in vs 29 is, “Oh that they had such a heart as this always to fear me and to keep all my commandments.” Another way to translate that would be “Who will give them a heart as this always?” If following me is going to succeed, they need the heart for it.

And then in our passage, he says in verse 5 you must “love the Lord your God with all your heart.” How will they be able to do that? Verse 6, “These word that I command you today shall be on your heart.” If any of this is going to succeed, it’s going to hinge on whether or not these people have a heart for it. Not whether they are intellectually convinced, but whether or not their hearts are inclined towards it.

If you’ll permit me to jump through this theme as we see it in Deuteronomy, turn forward to chapter 10. He repeats the command from our passage in chapter 10 verses 12-13

READ 10:12-13.

And how are they supposed to love him with all their heart?

Read 10:16

That’s a graphic picture of what God says must happen before they will obey. Their heart must be circumcised. And just like that’s a confusing image to us I’m sure that was a very confusing picture to them as well. How is that sort of thing even possible? How would we even go about doing that? We can’t modify our hearts. We can’t perform open heart surgery. And although today we can modfy people’s physical hearts, we have no ability to modify someone’s spiritual heart. I can’t even modify my own spiritual heart. I can’t cause myself to love and desire God and His Word anymore than I can cause myself to love and desire anchovies. You can give me all the arguments you want for why they’re healthy, but I’m still not going to enjoy them. And I certainly can’t convince myself to love them by sheer willpower. Unless something outside of us changes our hearts, unless someone outside of us changes our desires, we won’t be able to keep the Bible’s clear command.

This is pretty bad news. So let’s turn deeper into Deuteronomy, all the way to chapter 30. How will we get this heart that is inclined towards God and loves to follow him? Read verse 6.

Read 30:6

God himself will do what we could never do. He will change our hearts. He will remove the heart of stone that is cold and callous towards him, his people, and his word. He will replace that heart with a heart of flesh, a living heart, one whose desires are inclined towards God and not away from him. We call this moment conversion, when you turn to God and say, “I’m incapable of changing my own heart. It’s inclined towards sin. Its desire is only to please itself. I am not capable of obeying the Bible’s one clear command. I need you to do what I could never do for myself. Through Jesus Christ, forgive my sins and cleanse me of this heart of stone.” This is when your heart is replaced. This is when you can finally obey Scripture’s clear command which is for everyone to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

You don’t have to convince a bird to sing or a puppy to chase a ball. They love it. You don’t have to convince children to eat candy or a hunter to spend time in the woods. And you don’t have to convince someone whose heart is inclined towards God to read his Word.

Church, if you find yourself disinterested in God’s Word, if you find yourself regularly ignoring it, take time to evaluate yourself today. Maybe you like the idea of being at church for the sake of community and maybe you like the idea of people obeying the Bible because it makes for a safer community, but if you your own heart does not desire God’s Word, then it says something more about your heart than it does about God’s Word. Has your heart been changed? Has God circumcised your heart so that you can love him with all of it?

God isn’t some tyrannical monster that is forcing you to bow beneath his iron fist. His heart is inclined towards you. He loves you with all his heart and soul and strength. In our passage he says he wants your days to be long, he wants it to go well with you, and he wants you to enjoy the blessing of a land flowing with milk and honey. God wants to give you all of the great things that are part of his kingdom. But you must have a new heart to receive it.

Beg God. Plead with God. Urge him to transform your heart. It is your only hope.

God’s Word is clear. It has a clear command - Love the Lord your God. It has a clear audience - everyone. And it has one clear hope - a new heart. Don’t believe the lie Satan tells you to keep you away from it, that this book is too hard to be understood. It’s clear.

It’s clear that God loves you. It’s clear that God sent his son to die for you. And it’s clear that God wants to give you a new heart by placing your faith in Christ and calling on him to save you.

Romans 10:17 says, salvation comes through faith and faith by hearing of the Word of God

PRAYER