Imperatives for God’s Followers

“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord which I am commanding you today for your good.  Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.  Yet the Lord set His heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.  Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.  For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.” –Deuteronomy 10:12-17 (ESV).

Imperative is defined as “entreaty, command, exhortation.”  In this focal passage from Deuteronomy, God gives five strong imperatives:  fear the Lord, love Him, serve Him, walk in His ways, and keep (obey) His commandments.  Note the progression of these exhortations:  The first is to fear the Lord; recognizing His reverence and holiness is paramount to fulfilling the remainder of the entreaties.  Next comes the command to love Him.  Whom we love, we honor and respect.  We love Him because He first loved us (I John 4:9). Next, we serve Him; no half-hearted allegiance, but “with all your heart and all your soul.”  Next comes obedience, keeping His statutes and commandments.  Moreover, He reminds us that these actions on the part of God’s followers are “for your good.” 

Then comes a wonderful reminder of Who is giving these imperatives:  God, maker and sustainer of heaven and earth and all therein; the loving Father of us all who called and ordained our forefathers for a special service and continued the line through us.  A further imperative:  “circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart.” The original physical circumcision of all males was part of the covenant between God and Abraham and all of Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 17).  Here we are asked to cut away all the stubbornness and rebellious thoughts and actions that prevent the heart from trusting and loving God.  This is an intentional spiritual exercise to cleanse and purify the heart; but at the same time it is beyond our human capacity to accomplish.  A change in the heart is wrought by faith and is the work of the Holy Spirit who woos and invites the individual to turn to God.  Then cleansing comes, not through an outward act, not through good works, but by the change in the heart brought about by God in response to faith.

Today many will go to houses of worship throughout our land to call upon the name of the Lord.  We are reminiscent of the Psalmist’s adulation when he said, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord” (Psalm 122:1).  Statistics of regular church attendance in America do not coincide with those who state they believe in God.  Putting other activities ahead of worship in a corporate body can easily distract us from that joyous intention the Psalmist declared, the joy at gathering at the house of the Lord.  If you are reading this, and have allowed personal interests, seeking after pleasure or entertainment, or other distractions to rob you of the joy of church attendance, perhaps now is a time to renew your vows to “neglect not to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25).  At this crucial time of crossroads in our nation and in our world, we need to meet together to worship, pray and be instructed in God’s Word.

Prayer.  God, may we seriously heed these imperatives given so long ago to Your people.  They are still needful and applicable today as we prepare ourselves to stand firmly for the right.  Amen.

Love One Another for Love Is of God

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loves us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” –I John 4:7-11 (NKJV). Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…And now abide faith, hope love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” –I Corinthians 13:4-8a, 13 (NKJV).

Today is Valentine’s Day. This day to express love will have telephone lines, e-mail out- and in-boxes busy, facebook messages composed and sent, cards received in the mail, floral deliveries made, gifts bestowed. All because someone loves someone else. And all of this is very good. I was hard-pressed to select Scriptures on love for this special day because there are so many references, in both Old and New Testaments, that teach of love. Checking Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Old and New Testaments for references to love (in its various forms), I found five full columns of very fine print leading to scriptures from many of the Bible books from Genesis to Revelation. Love is an important emotion, one that every person needs for spiritual and emotional nurture, and an ingrained capacity which is part of our nature because we are created in the image of God, and “love is God is of God” for “God is love.” I selected the passages cited above from I John 4 and I Corinthins 13 with prayer and thanksgiving, because I considered them to teach us much we need to know about love, its nature and purpose. I hope we reread the verses several times today and pray that our love for God and others may grow day by day. There’s much truth in the popular song, “It’s love, it’s love, it’s love that makes the world go ‘round.”

We’ve often heard of the various Greek terms used for love in the New Testament, and of these agape (noun) and agapao (verb) are used to express God’s love for His Son and for His children, and for their proper attitude toward each other in Christian love. We have a perfect expression of the love of God for us in the Lord Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son…” (John 3:16). How amazing, how deep, how complete that love: “whosoever believeth.” Christian love results from His first loving us and is manifested as a fruit of His Spirit working in us. We practice agape love when we manifest love one for another as it is described in the Corinthian passage cited above.

On St. Valentine’s Day I lost one of the great loves of my life, and I think about that sad anniversary each February 14. I was a young teenager of fourteen when my beloved mother died on Valentine’s Day. Although the grace of God helped me through that difficult period of loss, I’ve wondered since how it might have been if I could have known her devoted love for a longer period in my life. I did, however, grow up often asking, “What would my mother advise me to do in this situation?” And as I thought through challenges, her love still surrounded me. Then I had a great love from my life partner, Rev. Grover Jones. We had had two dates before Valentine’s Day rolled around when we first met. We were falling in love and it seemed for sure it was to be more than “puppy” love. He gave me a single red rose from the florist shop, with fern and baby’s breath on February 14, 1948. That was my first gift from him. As long as he was able he remembered Valentine’s Day by giving me red roses. The number grew to a dozen as we had less penurious days. After his illness, my dear children, remembering how their Dad had given me our “love remembrance” of roses on Valentine’s Day, continued to send me roses. This Valentine’s Day, love God and shed his love abroad to the significant others about you. It will do your heart good.

On Loving and Hating

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love you enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” –Matthew 5:43-45 (ESV). “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”-I John 4:20-21 (ESV). “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all ffenses.”-Proverbs 10:12 (ESV).

Some people are easy to love because they are loveable. Some people are not easy to love because, for reasons we have allowed to exist, they are unlovable, maybe even our enemies. Jesus was revolutionary in His teachings. He taught that we are to love even our enemies, those who persecute or do evil toward us. The context of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5:43-45 was during His Sermon on the Mount. He quoted from Leviticus 19:18: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; I am the Lord,” The Jews could well agree to love neighbors, if they were loveable but a commonly held belief was that no harm would be done spiritually if one hated his enemy. Not so; love your neighbor but also love your enemy. Does God make a distinction? No; He sends his rain and sunshine on both the just and unjust, those who love Him and those who don’t. No distinction or favoritism is shown. Neither should we profess to love God and hate our brother. The love for God and hatred for one’s fellowman cannot exist within the same heart. Then John adds a reasonable analysis. If you can’t love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you cannot see? John could be referring to the time when the lawyer from the Pharisees came asking Jesus: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” -Matthew 22:36-39 (ESV) [quoting Deuteronomy 6:5].

Following the signing of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, General Douglas MacArthur was made Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces and sent to Japan to supervise the occupation army. At his Tokyo headquarters in October, 1945, he met with four clergymen from America, the first plain-clothes US visitors to Japan since the war. The ministers had gone to check on Christians in Japan and how they fared after the war. General McArthur, seeming to realize that if any hope existed for rescuing the Japanese from choosing Communism, it would be through the strength and moral rectitude of Christianity. “Give me 1,000 missionaries as soon as possible, and Bibles, Bibles and more Bibles,” MacArthur requested. The General had been instructed by President Harry Truman to “use whatever actions necessary to control the vicious and cruel savages.” Churches did respond, and within the next five years, over 2,000 missionaries, teachers and social workers went to Japan. Much criticism evolved over MacArthur’s request and the consequent sending of missionaries. Many said it was “mixing politics and religion.”

Today the criticism would be for a “politically incorrect” action. Japan did not turn to Christ and Christianity in large numbers, as only one-half of one percent of the Japanese population have become Christians. However, General MacArthur’s consciousness of being called of God at a time when Japan was held to be the enemy, even if conquered, was a desire to love the enemy and provide a way for them to have a moral foundation for establishing a democracy. “Love your enemies” was at the heart of this call for missionaries. God expects and enables us to love friends and enemies because of the love of Christ in our hearts.