Deuteronomy 6:1-19

Principles and Duties

Deu 6:1-12

A wonderful change has taken place in the tone of Moses. We can tell by his very voice that he is much older than when we first knew him, and much tenderer. When we first heard his voice, we noted how singularly wanting it was in mellowness, sympathy, kindliness, such as sore and wounded hearts may recognise and bless. Throughout the Book of Exodus the tone of Moses was very high, penetrating, and commanding. Then a change took place in the whole manner of the man: he was not less in stature, not less keen of vision; yet somehow he was quieter, perhaps more indulgent, certainly mellower. In Deuteronomy all these qualities of the voice, being also qualities of the spirit, culminate; Moses exhorts, entreats, wrestles with men, that they may be wise and good; there is nothing wanting that is suggestive of ripeness of experience, depth and genuineness of sympathy. Moses becomes shepherd again, only now men and women and children, more wayward than any beasts of the earth, constitute his multitudinous and most trying flock. Read Deuteronomy immediately after Exodus, and mark, though the fire of his eye is not dimmed, the growth of the man in the softening of his voice, in the multitude of his tears, in his pastoral solicitude for the salvation of Israel. The sixth chapter of Deuteronomy is full of exhortation and expostulation. In the third verse we read, "Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey." This is not bribery. Moses must not be conceived of as holding up a prize, saying, This donation is for the best-behaved amongst you. No man can be made good by such temptations. The very desire to have the prize may itself indicate a viciousness inveterate and ineradicable. Moses is not pointing out a reason, but indicating a consequence or issue: whoever observes and does the commandments of God shall enter into largeness of blessing, immeasurable depth of holy contentment, and every land shall be a land flowing with milk and honey. The man makes the land. When men everywhere praise the Lord, the earth shall yield her increase: the swelling psalm of honest thankfulness and the waving harvest of golden wheat shall be seen together upon the earth. No man can do right in order that it may be well with him, but no man can do right without its being consequentially well with every faculty of his mind, every emotion of his spirit, every outgoing of his life. Moses is already preaching the Sermon upon the Mount according to the measure of the light which made up his ancient day. What is he now doing but saying, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you"? "Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do the commandment of God; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily." Our business is with the "hearing" and the "observing," and God's business is with the other end, namely, the end of result, and issue, and blessing.

But Moses soon comes back to central principles. Moses is never less than a philosopher, a philosopher with a broad streak of shepherdliness running all through his mental and moral constitution, but still a philosopher, a reasoner, a theologian. What could be more pregnant with meaning, more inexhaustible in suggestion and poetry, than the fourth verse, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord"? The sentence seems to be easy. There is no simplicity in the Bible that does not hold within its lines the very eternity of Jehovah. We must have a right view of God. The meaning of the exclamation of Moses is not that the Lord our God is one Lord as against some possible distribution of number in His own constitution, but He is one Lord in distinction from all the gods and idols, and all the claimants to human worship known in all the lands and peoples through which Israel has passed; the Lord stands apart from them; he is singular in relation to them; he has no relations with them, unless they be relations of contempt and mockery and disdain. Moses was not arguing a theological proposition: he was not laying down the doctrine of the unity of God as against the tri-unity of God; that sphere of thinking was not involved in this contemplation of the divine nature; Israel was called to monotheism as opposed to polytheism the many gods that ruled the inferior thinking, and accounted for the debasing superstition of mankind.

Yet, though so lofty in his conception, Moses soon becomes tender in his tone. Hence we find in the fifth verse words which even Jesus Christ did not alter: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." God must never be set away from our love that is to say, in some inaccessible region of intellectual contemplation or of high theological imagining. God must be kept quite near to the heart. Once let the heart lose touch of God, and God himself becomes but a distant and infinite idol. Keep the heart right, keep the soul sweet, keep love unmixed and unembarrassed a free, generous, undivided affection, and all the rest will flow out of that central conviction and attitude as a living stream out of a living fountain. The question which the soul should often put to itself should relate to love. There is a place for reverence for the worship so awestruck as to be speechless; but we must always find room for simple, childlike, clinging love. Jesus Christ delighted to paint God as a Being full of love so loving the world as to spare nothing for its redemption and salvation. The love of God culminates in the Cross of Christ. The Cross of Christ is not only the symbol of the Atonement, it is the eternal pledge of a beneficent Providence: not only does it include forgiveness of sin and the way into the liberty and peace of heaven, it includes a guarantee of daily bread and daily care, divine attention to all the details of human life. "If God spared not his own Son" is the basis of Paul's sublime appeal on the matter of human providence and social government. God being the object of love, we ourselves must have the spirit of love in regard to God; we must love God. Love does not reason: love is a poor logician as to forms and symbols; love insists upon speaking its own language and finding its own prayers, and creating its own songs and setting them to its own music. Love will have liberty. Love could never live in prison. Love was made to fly in the open firmament of heaven, to beat its gracious wings against the very gates of the morning, to rise into the holy place of the light, and to come back to do earth's work with heaven's purity and tenderness. Children can love where they cannot understand. Love is before reason and after reason: love passes through the zone of reason, and ascends to the heaven where it was created in the heart and thought of God. Live in reason, and life will be cold; do nothing that cannot be defined and affirmed and indicated by consecutive reasons, and life may become mechanical. Rise into the very passion of love the very sacrificial temper of consecrated affection and the wilderness shall be a garden, and death but a messenger sent to bring the soul into some inner place in God's infinite sanctuary.

Is it enough to have a right conception of the unity of God in relation to the multitudinous idolatries of the world, and to have a right view of the moral qualities of God as opposed to an insensate and unresponsive deity? Moses teaches that there is no religious sufficiency in either or both of these things. Moses will have more. What more he will have he tells us in plain terms: "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart" ( Deu 6:6 ). We begin with words; we begin with things and with pictures, with substances and with commandments, visible and utterable; and from all these we may grow away not by an act of separation but by an act of the fulfilment which comes out of development. Christian words are to be in our heart. The heart has a memory of its own. Give into the custody of the heart some lesson, and it will be retained. Men remember what they want to remember, in all the highest relations of life. Intellectual memory is hardly called into operation in this matter of religious communion. The heart is kept alive; the fire upon the altar of the heart never goes out; the heart hears every knock upon the door; the heart sees every sign that is marked upon the spaces of the firmament; the heart overhears all that is passing which has relation to its own development and completion. We are what we are in the heart. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

Are the words of God to be kept in the heart as treasure may be kept in some secret and inviolable place? Is the heart the only organ that is interested in this great matter of religious information and culture? Moses gives the reply: "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children" ( Deu 6:7 ). He who teaches out of his heart will be able to speak to children, even in the simplest sense of that term. Children like teachers who talk out of their hearts. The heart knows all the little words because itself is a little word of one syllable. The heart waits for the very slowest walker in this great quest of the temple of wisdom: the heart says, We must tarry for the cripple. When the intellect would say, Let us urge forward, and the imagination would step from mountain-top to mountain-top, miles at a time, the heart says, Wait! here is a little child who cannot go at that pace; here is a poor old traveller who wants to res awhile; stop! not one must be lost: every child and every cripple and the meanest member of the flock must be saved. There is a way of teaching the words of God: they may be so taught as to repel or discourage or affright; or they may be so taught as to allure, fascinate, entrance, and put out of view every competitive spectacle or seduction. God's word must be spoken in God's way.

Having delivered the words to the children, does the task end there? Moses says it does not end at any such point; he adds, "and shalt talk of them" not lecture upon them, not deliver superb and magnificent orations upon them, but "talk" of them. The very word is suggestive. The words of God are to be so thoroughly in our hearts as to become part of our life, and to mingle with our very breathing; then we may talk about them with the ease of conscious mastery, with the familiarity not only of intellectual intimacy, but of the heart's truest friendship. Religion is not to be introduced upon state occasions, or upon great days, or even upon the Sabbath day as an exclusive period of time. The word of God is to be talked about, is to come into conversation as if it had a right to be there, to elevate the speech of social man, to give grace and dignity and solemnity to all the transactions and covenants which make up the business of the day. To teaching we must add talking; to the formal exposition we must add the informal and most friendly suggestion and the unexpected prayer, coming into conversation with the ease which belongs to perfect acquaintance with the Spirit of God.

Is the teaching to be conducted in the sanctuary, and the talking to be limited to holy places of public resort? Moses gives an answer to these inquiries, and there is no escape from the comprehensive terms in which his response is couched: "when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up" ( Deu 6:7 ). Here is a religion which covers the whole day, which belongs to every attitude of man, which condescends to flow into the mould of daily position and continual progress. The word of God can accommodate itself to every season and to every position and to all the circumstances of life. It is never there by force, or unaccountably there; it belongs of right to our whole life. It can be spoken in walking; it can simplify itself so as to suit the position of one who is sitting in his house, quietly and lovingly, in the very centre of the family; when the man lies down, religion will consent to be spoken about in terms and promises of restfulness and recruiting and the sleep which brings youth back with it; and religion is so energetic that when the man rises up a whole man, complete in strength, reinvigorated in every faculty, it can leap forth into every expression of energy and outrun every effort of the mind.

So the answer of Moses is very complete. The word of God is to be in the heart, it is to be taught to children, it is to form the subject of talk, it is to be talked about everywhere. Does the matter end there? Moses has still further field for religious activity. He is delighted to find the words of God in the heart, and to hear them talked in the public assembly, and to hear them spoken about with all the familiar ease of conversation: he is delighted to meet men in the house and on the highway, sitting down, rising up, and still talking about the goodness and the judgment of God; but he will have more: Moses adds, "And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes" ( Deu 6:8 ). There shall be no secret religiousness, no stealthy piety, no profound consecration that wraps around itself garments which are so used by itself as not to involve particularity of devotedness. If the word is in the heart, it must also be written on the hand; if the word is part of the speech, which only a few can hear, it must be as frontlets before the eyes, that observers may note, so that men passing by may be able to say, This man publicly acknowledges, and, perhaps, publicly worships, God.

Does Moses put a full stop here? Moses does not: Moses still finds further space "And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates" ( Deu 6:9 ). Moses would have a broad religion, and would have a broad religion broadly acknowledged. The heart, the tongue, the hands, the eyes, the house, this is most comprehensive. It is, in fact, absolutely inclusive. There is no spot left on which the devil may play his pranks. The heart all Bible, the speech all savour, the hand all consecration, the eyes set in one direction, the posts of the house and the very gates bearing inscriptions of heaven, this was the religious idea and this the religious programme of Moses.

Then comes a great caution: "And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full; then beware " ( Deu 6:10-12 ). Moses is growing old, but he is intellectually as astute as ever. It is not his soul that is growing old; it is not the perennial mind that is drying up or withering away. Mark the conception which Moses formed of all advancing civilisation. How much we have that we have not done ourselves! We are born into a world that is already furnished with the library, with the altar, with the Bible. Men born into civilised countries have not to make their own roads.

We are born into the possession of riches. The poorest man in the land is an inheritor of all but infinite wealth, in every department of civilisation. In the very act of complaining of his poverty he is acknowledging his resources. His poverty is only poverty because of its relation to other things which indicate the progress of the ages that went before. Young men come into fortunes they never worked for; we all come into possessions for which our fathers toiled. We could not assemble in God's house in peace and quietness today if the martyrs had not founded the Church upon their very blood. Men today enjoy the liberty for which other men paid their lives. It is ungrateful to forget that every liberty we enjoy, every security we boast, is the result of suffering too poignant to be expressed adequately in words. Coming into a civilisation so ripe and rich, having everything made ready to our hands, the whole system of society telephoned so that we can communicate with distant friends and bring them within hearing, the table loaded with everything which a healthy appetite can desire, all these things constitute a temptation, if not rightly received. Moses drew the picture, and then said "Beware." In the time of prosperity, and fulness, and overflow "then beware lest thou, forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage" ( Deu 6:12 ). Prosperity has its trials. "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Poverty may be a spiritual blessing. The impoverishment and punishment of the flesh may be religiously helpful. There are anxieties connected with wealth as well as with poverty. The high and the mighty amongst us have their pains and difficulties as well as the lowliest and weakest members of society. Ever let men hear this word of caution "beware." When the harvest is the best harvest that ever was grown in our fields, then "beware." When health is long-continued and the doctor an unknown stranger in the house, then "beware." When house is added to house and land to land, then "beware." Many men have been ruined through prosperity.

Selected Note

" Frontlets between thine eyes " ( Deu 6:8 ). The practice of using phylacteries was founded on a literal interpretation of that passage where God commands the Hebrews to have the law as a sign on their foreheads, and as frontlets between their eyes. It is probable that the use of phylacteries came in late with other superstitions; but it should be remembered, that our Lord does not censure the Pharisees for wearing them, but for making them broad out of ostentation; and it is still uncertain whether the words referred to ought not to be taken literally. One kind of phylactery was called a frontlet, and was composed of four pieces of parchment, on the first of which was written Exodus 13:1-10 ; on the second, Exodus 13:11-16 ; on the third, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ; and on the fourth, Deuteronomy 11:13-21 . These pieces of parchment, thus inscribed, they enclosed in a piece of tough skin, making a square, on one side of which was placed the Hebrew letter shin ( ‏ש ‎ ), and bound them round their foreheads with a thong or riband when they went to the synagogue. Some wore them evening and morning, and others only at the morning prayer.

As the token upon the hand was required, as well as the frontlets between the eyes, the Jews made two rolls of parchment, written in square letters, with an ink made on purpose, and with much care. They were rolled up to a point, and enclosed in a sort of case of black calf-skin. They then were put upon a square bit of the same leather, whence hung a thong of the same, of about a finger in breadth, and about two feet long. These rolls were placed at the bending of the left arm, and after one end of the thong had been made into a little knot in the form of the Hebrew letter yod ( ‏י ‎ ), it was wound about the arm in a spiral line, which ended at the top of the middle finger.