One Lord, One Love, One Book (Deut. 6:4-9)

MP: We need to love God before anything else, and that looks like a steady habit of reading and obeying his word.

Connection

We have a building project ahead of us in 2026. We have sent out a church with many of our best and brightest. We have a new identity and a new culture now. Those things are still growing. We need to set out in a common direction to be all that God wants us to be together.

What is that common direction? The same mission, vision, values as we have had before. We are headed towards multiplying worshippers of Jesus and healthy churches in the Twin Cities and beyond. We multiplied more than ever in 2025, and we want to begin building toward multiplying again. We won’t stop reproducing gospel communities until king Jesus returns.

To move in that direction this year, we want to begin the year by emphasizing “Be with the Father” (our first core value). It’s our first core value because we emphasize that if we don’t have communion with God, our community will not be supernatural and in the words of Jesus, “apart from me, you can do nothing.”

If we struggle with this value, as I do, what we suffer from is nothing less than a love problem. What we love arranges our priorities- the choices we make are a consequence of the order in which we love things.

One question I want to ask this morning is, What should I do if my love for God is too small?

Before getting into our text, I want to touch on a little context:

Context

God was using Moses to build a community at this point as well. They are fresh out of Egypt, standing before mount Sinai, and about to embark through the wilderness towards Canaan. It’s at this point that Moses issues this crucial and foundational command that Jesus is going to call the “great commandment” (Matt 22:37).

Also, by way of a roadmap, I am preaching this message on loving God and Sam will preach next week on loving God’s word. After that, we will hop into the first letter of Peter together. Okay, here we go:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

The first word, “Hear!” should grip our attention. Moses is saying, “listen up- the next thing I will say to you holds special significance.” Okay, what does Moses want to share with us?

“The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Okay, what? This is a strange and mysterious phrase. We are meant to reflect on it. It could mean several things, such as God is unique or unified within himself.

However, considering the context of warnings about idolatry (v. 14), it mostly likely means, The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. Out of all the competing gods in the ancient world, there is one who is the Lord.

There is one Lord who created the world in the beginning, who summoned dry land from the sea and formed human life from the dirt.

There is one Lord who brought plagues against Egypt, and rescued his people from captivity, bringing them forth from the land of slavery- again through water onto dry land.

There is one Lord who fed his people in the wilderness, providing them with bread from heaven and sustaining their lives.

All these things are just as true for us- our one Lord made us, rescued us from the greater Egypt of sin and death through the blood of his son, and answers our prayers to “give us today our daily bread.”

This same Lord will also return to the earth at the end of history to judge the living and the dead. I am here to say to you this morning, “hear O Church, the Lord your God; he is Lord alone!”

Or here is how the Apostle Paul puts it when he is likely meditating on these verses in 1 Cor 8,

5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

If these things are true, if thee is one Lord who made all things, recuses all his people, gets them safely home, and returns to judge the living and the dead, you don’t ever have to go outside of his will to have your needs met.

 If there is nothing that can stop his good plan for you, you don’t ever need to disobey him to provide for yourself. You never have to sell your allegiance to another God.

We can all say like the Apostle Peter, “where else can we go? you alone have the words of eternal life.”

If you find yourself struggling to love God as much as you want, begin by meditating on who he is and what he’s done for you and all his people and asking God to make it real to you.

Now, if there is truly but one Lord who made all things, rescued all his people, and will return to rule all things, there is also but one proper response. Here it is in verse 5:

5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

The greatest reality (“one Lord”) leads to the great commandment (according to Jesus), that we must have one great love. One Lord leads to one love.

If you pause to think about it for a moment, the word “love” can be surprisingly hard to define. We intuitively know what it is; it can be harder to say exactly what it is. Here are two words that can help: allegiance AND affection.

Let’s start with “allegiance.” If your Lord can crush all your enemies, beginning with your sins through Jesus’s death on the cross, and if he can give you all you need to get safely home to him, he is worthy of your allegiance, that is, your singular devotion. You can see that allegiance is in view here with the emphasis on “commands.”

Another way to put it, just like a kingdom, your heart only has one throne and only one person or thing will sit upon it. There will be one love that surpasses all others.

What do you think that is this morning? For which of your values do you sacrifice your other values?

I want to make an appeal to you this morning, as much as is in your power, to unseat anything other than the Lord Jesus and offer him all your allegiance this year.

Now, let’s move onto affection. When the Lord created, he not only created with power, but with beauty. This world is beautiful is it not? And when he rescued on the cross, Jesus’s life for our own, it’s not only a wonder and a sorrow, but there is beauty in it as well. The beauty of our Lord and what he’s done calls for a response of affection, that is, of feeling longing and yearning for closeness with him.

There is a sermon from long ago that several of us like here called, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. What that title means is that the answer to freedom from your sins and idols is not emptying your heart of love and affection for things. Rather, it’s of filling it with a greater affection and love for Jesus that displaces every lesser affection!

Now, according to this verse, we are supposed to “love the Lord” that is, have allegiance and affection towards him, with all our heart, all of our soul, and all of our might. That’s a lot of “all.” The idea is that our response should be proportionate to who God is. To what degree is our Lord unique and excellent? That’s the degree to which we should respond with love.

“heart and soul” probably refer to our inner self. Allegiance and affection would be come from and flow out of our inner self. “Might,” on the other hand, likely refers to our outer self- our words and deeds. When you serve a majestic Lord, you do noble deeds in this life for his kingdom. What noble deed does the Lord want you to courageously step into this year?

Men, don’t dissipate your might in 2026. Use all your might to lead yourself and family into passionate pursuit of Jesus. Video games and sports cannot give you the victory you were made for. You won’t feel a sense of manly victory until you do godly deeds that affect people’s eternity.

6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

Verse 5 flows from verse 4, if there is one Lord, then you must have one love. In the same way, verse 6 flows from verse 5, if you have one love, then you must be devoted to one book. We are people of one Lord, one love, one book.

Jesus may have had these verses in mind when he said, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Just a quick clarification, in the Bible, obedience and intimacy are not at odds with each other. Obedience is a pathway to intimacy.

What does it mean that these words should be “on your heart?” The idea is that the book of God is not just an external book that we study and become masters of. Rather, it gets inside of us and masters us. We don’t read the Bible just to know more, we read the Bible to feel more so that we can love more.

This only happens when we start to do things like memorize and meditate on Scripture. If you prayerfully do that, you will find that God’s word is less of just some spiritual book out there that the pastor talks about, but rather that its words are dear to your heart.

If you are struggling to love God and his word, memorize it, and ask God to help you love his Word.

Now, verse 7 flows out of verse 6,

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.

The passage started with the biggest reality, love for the one true Lord. The pattern we are seeing is that the big reality- love for God- works itself out in the small places of our lives. The primary venues for us expressing our love for God are our hearts and our homes. God meant for his big glory to show up in little people and little places.

Now, if you have children, you are a “teacher”- it’s almost like you have your own little church to lead, and just as the word is at the center of our community and gatherings, so it must be in our households!

On thing so different about Christians and the world is how we organize our households. So many American households orient around externals like athletic performance or college preparation. We orient our homes around heart formation. We don’t want our children to win or get rich as much as become a kind of person who walks with God.

What kind of home life does this goal create? It must create an unhurried, present lifestyle where there is space for spiritual conversations to unfold in the everyday stuff of life.

I recently heart someone point out that “quality time” with your kids is a myth- there’s no such thing because, you can’t control when your kids need you. Yet, what Moses paints for us here is a conversational lifestyle that moves towards spiritual conversation about the things God has said.

The great inheritance you can pass down to your kids is love for God. Yet, if they don’t experience your heart for God and heart for them, how can they receive that from you?

What does your family talk about most of the time and most easily? I want to suggest to you that the topic your conversation most likely drifts towards is what you are forming your kids to worship.  

And what’s the best way to spark spontaneous religious conversation on the home if that is difficult? Start by scheduling more formal conversation about the Bible, maybe around the dinner table, to help it become more normal.

Moses keeps going,

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.

This is some powerful imagery! The word of God on your hand and head- likely symbolizing that its commands guide your deeds and your thoughts. It seems like the mark of the beast in Revelation is a parody of this.

Then we can see that call to put the word of God in public places- doorposts and gates. I think the idea here is that your allegiance to king Jesus is public.

I honestly need to think more about this one. I don’t think I can honestly say that it’s common public knowledge for those who know me that I’m a sold out follower of Jesus (for example- with my neighbors). Yet, the image here is that your all out allegiance is public!

Application

The progression of this passage is from the one Lord we love to the one book we obey. Our saturation with the book is an expression of our one love for our one Lord.

There is so much we want to keep doing as a church in 2026 and beyond, we want to keep multiplying worshippers of Jesus and healthy churches in he Twin Cities and beyond. 2025 has been an unprecedented year for that in our church community.

Yet, we find ourselves in a new year now and we are a new community. So many pillars of our church has gone out (and are still on their way to the nations later this year). So many families and singles are new. We need a rock solid foundation on which to build if we will continue to be of fruitful use to king Jesus in the months and years ahead.

What will that rock solid foundation be? Love for God- an affection and an allegiance towards him- a desire to be with him and a desire to be like him.

And as this passage clarifies, the way to draw near to God and be like God is to be saturated in the book of God.

This is why we are making our core value of the year, “be with the Father.” We will have an emphasis on our MC’s this first season on Bible reading. Also, we have a church wide Bible plan we want to recommend to you. We just started a few days ago. We will read the whole NT in one year! Would you join us?

Christ/Church

If we can become a community of readers, meditators, and prayers together, we can continue to be a powerful and potent community in this city for Jesus. The power of our community so much depends on the choices each of your make as individuals to pursue closeness with God. When we come together, our time together is largely an overflow of how godly the people are.

Something that is striking to me is that Jesus didn’t become who he was by any other means. I don’t mean being sinless (he was always that), but as far as being filled with the Holy Spirit to minister with power. That happens after his forty days in the wilderness when he says to the devil (quoting from Deuteronomy), “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

So, this year, I want to challenge you to depend on the word of God no less than Jesus did.  Do we really think that if Jesus fulfilled God’s purposes through daily dependence on God’s word, that we will be able to do that with anything less than that?

Yet, what is so beautiful is that because of the cross, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the same intimacy that was available to Jesus when he lived on this earth is available to all of us now if we would but reach out and take it.

My friends, my message to you this morning is that we have one Lord, and because we have one Lord, we have one love, and because we have one love, we have one book- by the man we love.

My call this morning is, “take up and read!” this year. If you can’t find time, if you struggle and it just doesn’t work, ask God to grow your love for him, and then refuse to eat food before you eat the bread of life. As Deuteronomy says a few chapters later, “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”