Deuteronomy 6:4

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. Presenceis 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. Parker, vol. iv., p. 145.