Bible Commentaries

Deuteronomy 6:4

(with Matthew 28:19)

Observe:—

I. That the Scriptural Trinity implies that God is One. So far from being against the cardinal truth of God's unity, it actually assumes it. The Trinity of our faith means a distinction of persons within one common indivisible Divine nature. If we ask, What is the chief spiritual benefit which we derive from the knowledge of the unity of God? the answer is this: The unity of God is the only religious basis for a moral law of perfect and unwavering righteousness. It is a unity of moral character in the Ruler, and therefore of moral rule in the universe. It is such a unity as excludes all conflict within the Divine will, all inconsistency in the Divine law, all feebleness in the Divine administration.

II. What religious advantages do we reap from the fresh Christian discovery of a Trinity within this unity of the Divine nature? (1) To this question we answer, that the doctrine of the Trinity has heightened and enriched our conception of the nature of God. (2) This doctrine affords a basis for those gracious relations which it has pleased God to sustain towards us in the economy of our salvation.

J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons, p. 123.

I. The belief in one God gives rest to the active man; it satisfies his intellectual, his moral, his emotional, his spiritual, being.

II. In the field of scientific research this faith inspires us with a confident hope of reducing all phenomena to law, since all proceed from one hand, and express one creative will. This faith supplies that which physical science lacks and yet requires, viz., a prime mover and a sustaining power.

III. In morals this faith acts most powerfully upon our will and rouses us to exalt the higher nature and repress the lower Polytheism deifies the human passions, and turns the wors views into acts of religion; but if there be only one God, then our highest aspirations must give us the truest image of Him.

IV. Faith in one God brings peace to the mourner and to the suffering, for we know that He who now sends the trouble is the same God whose kindness we have felt so often. Having learned to love and trust Him, we are able to accept suffering as the chastisement of a Father's hand. If there were gods many, we could regard the troubles of life only as the spiteful acts of some malevolent deity; we must bribe his fellow-gods to oppose him.

V. Upon one God we are able to concentrate all the powers of the soul, our emotions are not dissipated, our religious efforts are not frittered away upon a pleasing variety of characters, but the image of God is steadily renewed in the soul, and communion with God grows ever closer.

F. R. Chapman, The Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal, Jan. 22nd, 1880.

The teaching of the text is that the "one God" must be "loved" and served by the whole man. Consider how the love of God is to be cultivated.

I. We cannot love an abstraction. God must be a personal God before we can love Him. We must have a sense of property in Him. He must be our own God.

II. Presence is essential to love, even in human love. If we have not a presence in fact, we always make it in fancy. There is an imaginary presence of the person we love always with us. God says, "My presence shall go with thee."

III. There must be prayer. Communion with the absent whom we love is essential to the existence and the growth of love.

IV. God is really a present God. Therefore we must do acts—acts which have Him in them. Acts of love make love.

V. There is no love like union—wedded union. And so through this mystery of union the love grows fond, intense, eternal. Our whole being gathers itself up to one focus, and the demand of the text becomes possible, and the duty becomes a necessity.

J. Vaughan, Sermons, 10th series, p. 6.

References: F.W. Robertson, Sermons, 4th series, p. 261; J. Oswald Dykes, The Law of the Ten Words, p. 35; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xii., p. 271. Deuteronomy 6:6, Deuteronomy 6:7.—E. M. Goulburn, Gospel of the Childhood, p. 37. Deuteronomy 6:7.—R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons, p. 21. Deuteronomy 6:16.—J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 205; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2178. Deuteronomy 6:20-25.—Parker, vol. iv., p. 145.

Deuteronomy 6:24

I. Let us examine the popular idea as to the excessive severity and formality of this law. To a transgressor who had not in him the living principle of obedience it was, no doubt, fearfully formal and stern. So is our statute-book to a felon, while on you and me it sits lightly as the air. Judaism was given from Sinai to that people for that people's good. It was God's best gift to them as they stood there before the mountain. Its relation to the future was their relation to the future; in training, educating, and developing them, it was making a future possible to their nation and to the world.

II. Notice that the very heart's core of a dispensation of law is duty, and duty is the master-key to life. Law is the buttress of right; its object is to fortify the dutiful soul. The real object of law is to help men to do right, and thus most effectually restrain from wrong; unless there be a sentiment of duty latent which the law can appeal to and elicit, it is heartless and hopeless work.

III. The receiving of a law was the first step of the people in a new and glorious career of personal and national development, which, though they have missed the crown, has left them the most notable, powerful, and capable race in the world. In other words, it opened a noble man's career to them; it will open the same to you.

IV. But, however we may magnify it, and however justly, the law is not a gospel, and can in no wise supply the place of a gospel to the world. The dispensation of law in our individual histories is but a "schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." The Gospel is the instrument of the reconciliation which the law declares to be needful, but cannot secure.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage, p. 202.

References: Deuteronomy 6:24.—A. W. Hare, Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 367. Deuteronomy 7:2-4.—T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. vi., p. 24. Deuteronomy 7:6.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day, p. 192. Deuteronomy 7:8.—Parker, vol. v., p. 6. Deuteronomy 7:9.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxi., p. 165; Parker, vol. v., p. 7 Deuteronomy 7:9, Deuteronomy 7:10.—R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 2nd series, p. 21. Deuteronomy 7:12, Deuteronomy 7:13.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day, p. 375. Deuteronomy 7:20.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., p. 673.