CTK Raleigh Sermons

CTK Raleigh Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.

God's word aloud together. So if you join your voices with mine:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart and 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. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

When your son asks you in times to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and statutes and the ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded you, then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous against Pharaoh and Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from there that he might bring us in and give us the land which he swore to give to our fathers.

And the Lord commanded us to do these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always that he might preserve us alive as to this day. And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all the commandments before the Lord our God as he has commanded us.

— Deuteronomy 6:4-25

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

"You Had One Job"

Several years ago, there was a thing going around the internet that was "you had one job" under all these different images. I have several of these to share with you this morning. First is the College of Architecture with really bad signage. You had one job. Then you have these raised storm grates that are above the level of the water. You had one job. Then you have tiles that were laid a little wrong. You had one job. And then you have the upside down eye on the tiger that makes him look kind of crazy. You had one job. And finally, the shovel in the asphalt. You had one job.

Today as we read what is arguably the most famous chapter in all of the book of Deuteronomy—in fact, maybe the most famous in the Old Testament—this is the "you had one job" section of the Bible. This is really what this is.

You may not realize this, but for the Jewish people, this is their John 3:16. It's called the Shema. In Hebrew, that means "to hear."

Hear, O Israel.

Listen. This is the most important thing. You had one job—all of God's law in a nutshell.

This fall as we walk through this book, we're not hitting every chapter. It's a long book, and I don't have space, and many of you don't have the attention for that. So we're hitting selected passages. You may notice we skipped something between Deuteronomy 4 last week and Deuteronomy 6 this week—Deuteronomy 5, which is the Ten Commandments. You may be like, "Why in the world would our pastor skip the Ten Commandments? Kind of important."

Yeah, kind of important. But it's second to the passage we read. For the Jewish people, this is it. The Ten Commandments are very important, but this is the one that they keep coming back to. This is the center point of the book of Deuteronomy. I've preached on the Ten Commandments before. You can look that up. But I want to emphasize this—you had one job passage.

There was a very popular song that came out by Billie Eilish a couple years ago with the Barbie movie. "What Was I Made For?" And Deuteronomy is answering that question right here:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you will love the Lord.

That's what we're made for. And here's what I want you to understand: it doesn't say remember the law. It doesn't say don't forget to obey. It says remember the Lord. Love the Lord. That's the most important thing. This is what we're made for—a love relationship with God. Yes, obedience. But that's not the primary thing. The primary thing is love. Loving the Lord.

We're going to go through this a little slowly to really get the scope of what's being commanded here into love. For Americans to say love something doesn't make sense. To command someone to love something—we think of love as a feeling, an emotional response, a reaction to something. And yet in this passage, it's really, really clear that love for the Hebrew mind is so much bigger.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your might. — Deuteronomy 6:4-5

It's your heart—that's at least your emotions. With all your soul, that's your whole self. Your nefesh, your whole self is what's pictured here. And finally, with all your might. Now what's funny about that word "might" is it's not a noun in Hebrew. It's not strength or might. It's actually the word "exceedingly" or "very." Love God with all your very. Love God with all your oomph, right? With all your very, with all your exceedingly. We wouldn't talk that way, but you get what they're saying right here. Love God that way.

You Had One Job

This is Israel's you had one job. My family loves the Christmas classic Elf. In the movie, Buddy the elf goes to work at a department store, Gimbels, in the toy department during Christmas time, and he drives his boss crazy. His boss is always trying to push product and get sales, and Buddy is singing and smiling all the time. His boss says, "Buddy, why are you smiling all the time?" He says, "I love smiling. Smiling is my favorite." And his boss says, "Make work your favorite."

Well, that's what's here. Make loving God your favorite. That's what the Shema is all about—loving God this way with all your heart and your soul and all your exceedingly. And if that weren't big enough in scope, let's expand it a little bit. The territory keeps expanding.

Listen. If you love someone, you love what they say to you. True confession: Susan and I have a plastic bin in our basement that's filled with letters between one another. We were away from each other in college and they're full of mushy "I love you" stuff. It's funny we hold on to those because I love the things that Susan has said to me. I love her words. She loves my words. We don't have a bin for IRS letters, or letters from Wake County Schools, or my insurance agency. We just don't keep those. But if you love someone, you love their words. You love what they say. And the Shema tells us all the places and spaces of your life to love God's words in all those places too.

You'll put his words on your heart, and you'll teach them diligently to your children. You'll talk about them when you sit down in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise. You'll bind them as a sign on your hand and they'll be like frontlets between your eyes. You'll write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. — Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Why? Why all the spaces? Because that's where you live. All the places of your life, all those places. You put God's words in your heart. Take them in. You talk about them with your kids. This is the minivan conversation. You teach them to the next generation. At night in your house, they're by the bedside. In the middle of the night when you can't sleep and you're struggling. When you wake up in the morning.

You may think, "This is impossible. Nobody can love God or love his word like that." But I think we can. I was really wrestling with this for this sermon. I'm like, are there any areas of my life that I think about all the time? Are there any areas of your life that you think about like this all the time? And I came up with two. You may have others, but for me they are work and relationships.

You know, it's easy to think about work when you're working and think about work when you're not working. On your phone, what are you doing? You're working. You're obsessed about work. You come home at night and you're like, "What happened today at work?" And you talk about work. You worry about work. You are thinking about work and it's hard to not think about work. Or what about relationships? You think about what you said at that party. You think about the family gathering and the way that you conducted yourself. You think about what you put on social media. You think about how other people perceive you, and you think about it in the morning and the night and the middle of the night.

You think about it and you talk about it with your friends. Don't we do this? So we have capacity to obsess. We have capacity to be this consumed with something. And God's like, love God. That's your favorite thing. Make that your new favorite. My point is this, we have the capacity to do this, but it's enormous. Let me make it a little bit bigger because I don't think it's big enough yet. Don't think it's big enough for this passage.

So listen, if that wasn't a big enough job, it gets bigger. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and on the frontlets between your eyes, you'll write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. All the parts of our lives—I just want you to think about this. These are all symbolic. Your hands, what you do. On your forehead, what you think about. You put them on the gates of your houses. You put them on your private life. You put them on the gates of the city, your public commercial life. It's all those places. All those places got to be loved and enjoyed, and His word treasured like this. There are no hidden parts of our lives, in other words. There's no parts internally to us where we have a sign on the inside that says, do not enter, God. This is just for me. All the parts.

When I was in Jerusalem this summer, one of the fascinating things for me was being around lots and lots of Orthodox Jews. I've been to New York and seen a couple of Orthodox Jews, but like everywhere. And they wear such distinctive clothing, and there's different types depending on which rabbi particular Orthodox Jews follow, but there are two things that are kind of staples of the outfit. One is called a phylactery. So a little bitty box there on your right side that Jewish men tie to their forehead. They have a strap around their arm. And you know it's funny, you can go to our airport, RDU, sells AirPods. You know what they sell in Tel Aviv? That. They have shops for that in the Tel Aviv Airport in case you want to buy one. But what's in there? Do you know what's inside the little box? There's four passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy, and you know what number one is?

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you will love the Lord your God.

And then, a mezuzah. This is outside your door of your house, and there's this little bitty—looks like a tube almost. And inside rolled up in that, written in really little tiny writing, guess what's in there? Four passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy. And you know what number one is?

You'll love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength, all your oomph.

And they walk into the house, they take two fingers, they kiss it and touch it. Now I don't know how effective that is at actually producing love for God, but that's the intention—that you would love God in all those spaces and places with that kind of intensity, with that kind of everywhere.

You know, I want us to see this. How big and bigger and biggest is this command to love God? Sometimes I think Christians believe that for the Jewish people, being a Jew was essentially about just obeying commands. It's about earning your way. And I just want to remind you, like, no. That is not—that's actually a distortion of Jewish teaching. It wasn't about earning your way. This is why Jesus turns to the rich young ruler and says, you kind of got this mixed up. You didn't do all the commands. It's about loving God, to love with such immensity and intensity in every area, such incredible height and depth and width and length. To love like that. This was Israel's one job. This is your one job.

So let me come down here for a second. How's it going down here at this point in the sermon? You hanging in? If I've done my job as a preacher, you should either be like completely excited or feel incredibly defeated this morning. You could be like, man, I want to love God like that. Or you could be like, bald guy has lost his marbles this morning. Nobody can do this. And there's no in between. I mean, you're really listening to my sermon—if y'all are, you're either like, this is awesome or this is terrible. Anybody feeling that? One of those this morning? Okay. Good. I'm maybe doing alright.

So here's what I want to say. You know, it goes even further because the Shema starts with this: the Lord your God, the Lord is one. Now that may sound like, okay, one god. That was big news in the ancient Near East. Every other nation around them had a team of gods, like Marvel superheroes, Marvel Cinematic Universe, lots and lots of them. But the focus here is God is one. And it says here, you will love the Lord your God. Now when you open up your Bible and you see the word Lord, it's printed in all little caps. That is code from your editor. The editor is saying, that's not just God. That's Yahweh. That's the name.

The name that God reveals to his people. And here's the crazy thing if you read your Bible. The patriarchs of Israel didn't know God's name. The people who would have been on their Mount Rushmore—Abraham didn't know God's name. God never revealed it to Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or Joseph. Nobody in Genesis knew God's name. God calls them to be his people and he doesn't tell them his name until Moses, until the burning bush. "My name is Yahweh, which means I am who I am." He reveals it to them. He gives them his name.

And this is what it's saying here. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. This God. And not only is this just like, is he one, but there's nobody like him. And using the name there, it means there is no one like God. Nobody. Only God is the one who's worthy of your worship. Only God can you give yourself to, and it will produce life in you and not deplete you.

I grew up in a little town in East Tennessee, and at the church next door to ours, there was a guy who was the youth director at that church. He was also a beginning musician, and he was starting out—he used to do youth retreats. I'm gonna thank Nick Gerbar for this picture. This is him doing a youth retreat for us. That's me on the far left hand side with lots of hair. That's Rich Mullins in the middle. And growing up in high school, he came and did youth retreats for us all the time, and he hadn't really started making it as a musician.

He has a song that I think perfectly captures this idea—that there's God and there's nobody like God, and there's not to be anyone like God. It's called "One Thing," and this is what he sings:

Everybody I know says they need one thing, but what they really mean is I just need one thing more. Everybody seems to think they've got it coming. Well, I know I don't deserve you, but I wanna love you and serve you more and more. You're my one thing. Save me from the things that might distract me, take them away and purify my heart. I don't wanna lose the eternal for the things that are passing because what I have when the world is gone is the love that goes on and on. You're my one thing. One thing. The pure in heart will see God.

Rich is capturing not only the scope, but the exclusivity. In order to in my heart and in your heart, if we're to be followers of God, it should be like God is first—and like by a country mile. Like he's lapped everybody else in the race for who's the champion of my heart and your heart. He's my one thing. He's what I want and treasure and prize above all else.

So again, how's it going down there? Elated or defeated? See, if I've done my job right, there's something about us that should say, "How? How does anybody love God like this?" And there's an answer in the passage. The answer is the gospel.

The Gospel According to Deuteronomy

Now the gospel here is not articulated in the way that we would articulate the gospel. It doesn't say, "Hey, there's a tree, there's a cross right outside of Jerusalem, and the son of God hung there for sinners." But this is what it says, verses 20 through 25:

When your son asks you in the time to come, "What's the meaning of all the testimonies and the statutes and ordinances?" In other words, God's law. "What's the meaning of all this, which the word of God has given you?"

The answer is—notice the answer. The answer is not, "Then you're gonna say to your son, 'Son, you better do all this.'" No. Here's the answer:

We were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

What is that? That's the gospel according to Deuteronomy. That's all the gospel at this point that Moses knows. Here's their salvation story. This is the way that they would put it. They would say, "Hey, we were under the curse of death. We were enslaved. And God broke in and we sacrificed the lamb and we took shelter under the blood of the lamb, and then God led us out and brought us and saved us from our enemies."

You see, there's a misconception among Christians about the Jewish community. Let's think about this. Pop quiz time. Which came first in the Bible? The exodus from Egypt—God delivering them out—or God giving them the law. Which came first? God rescuing them or God giving them the law?

Rescue. It's always been about that, y'all. It's always been about rescue first, then follow and obey. It's always been like that. Be saved, then obey the law. The law was given after Exodus to people who had been saved, not so that they could be saved. We will never earn our way. And the law was never intended as a vehicle to do that. In fact, there's no way it can.

The law—this is what the Puritans used to say—here's my main idea for this morning. The law leads me to Christ, and then Christ leads me back to the law. The law leads me to Christ. Christ leads me back to the law.

Let me ask you: what's the gospel you believe? It's some version of what they said.

I was in bondage and slavery to sin. I was under the sentence of death, and the lamb was slain and sacrificed for me. And I took shelter under his blood, and he's brought me out and given me new life. It's the same gospel. It's the same gospel.

I wondered, though, if a kid back in the time of this book, Deuteronomy, was sitting around going like, "Yeah, but Dad, why does a sheep substitute for me? How does that work?" I could see the dad going like, "I don't know. But I mean, that's what God says. It's supposed to work like this. Just trust me," which is something kids hate hearing from parents. But you could see them going, "Really?"

But you know how to answer that. Because in the New Testament, we read that Jesus comes to the River Jordan when John the Baptist is baptizing people. John looks and sees him coming and turns to those with him. He says, "Look, the lamb of God who bears the sins of the world."

The lamb. A lamb that's not just a substitute for us in our death, but also a substitute for us in obeying all of the law. Because if you look at the ministry of Jesus, Jesus loved the Lord his God with all of his heart and his soul and exceedingly. He loved God in all his spaces and places. He loved him in public. He loved him in private. He loved God's word. It was on his tongue. It's what he said over and over again.

Jesus the lamb—this is why we can take shelter under the blood of the lamb. Because he not only died for us on the cross, which is great news, but he lived for us in such a way that he perfectly fulfilled the law of God for you. And he is the righteous substitute.

This is why when Jesus shows up, he doesn't say, "Glad we're done with that law. That was terrible." He says, "No. I've come to fulfill the law. I am the fulfillment." The law leads me to Christ. It tells me I could never do what's required. I can't love God like this. But then Christ leads me back to the law, changes the motivation, shows me my need for a savior, and then shows me, of course, I wanna follow you.

Three Authorities

So in conclusion, I got three authorities I wanna quote this morning. I got a poet, a prince, and a princess.

First, the poet. William Cowper wrote a song called "Love Constraining to Obedience" about this very dynamic, about how the lamb fulfills the law for us. He says this:

To see the law by Christ fulfilled, To hear his pardoning voice Changes a slave into a child And duty into choice.

You've done everything for me. Now I wanna do everything for you.

The prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, said this about God:

When I thought God was cruel, when I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin. You know, I thought God was just about "you gotta obey, that's how you get in." It was easy to sin. But when I found God was so kind, when I found God was so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote my breast to ever think that I would do anything to displease him.

Alright. So poet and a prince. Last is a princess. Well, actually, the Princess Bride. The Christian movie, right?

So in the movie, there's a young maiden named Buttercup on a big farm. There's a servant boy who works there named Wesley, and she despises him. She has nothing to do with Wesley. She realizes she can push him around and boss him around. She tells him to do all these things, and every time he does something for her, he turns to her and says, "As you wish." Over and over.

And over time, watching Wesley do this, do that, pick up that bucket, put that up there, move these things for me—and him always saying, "As you wish" every time—it begins to change her heart. It goes from despising him to adoring him. And this is what causes Buttercup to fall in love with Wesley in true love. Some of y'all know this movie.

In a similar way, when the Lord Jesus Christ does everything for us, when he fulfills the law, when he turns every time to his Father and says, "Father, as you wish," this is what melts hard hearts. This is what changes us. This is what helps us go from "How could I ever do that?" to "Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I?"

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you this morning that from the very beginning, it's always been about loving God and being loved by God. There are so many ways we've confused that. There are so many ways in our own hearts we make you cruel. We make you into a taskmaster. And yet, Lord, your heart is always turned toward your children and inviting us to find a life in loving you. Thank you that we can't. It's really impossible for us, but that Jesus did everything for us. At every point, he said, "As you wish" to the Father. So that our hearts can turn toward him in gratitude and turn toward you in love.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand and sing together in response to God's word.