Words to Tie Onto Your Heart

Balaam rode home on his donkey, King Balak went off without his curse, and God's people stayed camped right where they were, on the flat plains of Moab. In front of them ran the Jordan River. Across the river stood the walls of Jericho, and beyond Jericho lay the land God had promised to Abraham.

Most of the camp was young. Almost all the grown-ups who had walked out of Egypt had died in the desert during the forty years of wandering. Their children had grown up in tents, eating manna. Most of them had never lived in a house at all.

Moses would not be crossing the river with them. God had told him so. So before they went, he called the whole camp together to tell them the thing that mattered most.

"Hear, O Israel!" Moses called, and the crowd went still. "The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

(In Moses' language the first word is Shema, which means "Listen!" Jewish people still say these words when they get up in the morning and when they go to bed.)

The nations across the river had a god for rain and a god for harvest and a god for war, and they bowed to all of them. Israel had one God. He had carried them out of Egypt and fed them in the desert, and he wanted all of their love.

"Keep these words on your hearts," Moses said. "Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them on your hands. Wear them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates."

Most families in the camp did not own a doorframe. (A tent has a flap, and there is not much room for writing on a flap.) But houses were coming. Many Jewish families still do just what Moses said. They roll the words up inside a case fixed beside the door, and they touch it on the way in and out.

"One day your children will ask you, 'What do all these commands mean?'" Moses went on. "Then tell them, 'We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out with a mighty hand.'"

He warned them as well. "The LORD is giving you houses full of good things you did not fill, wells you did not dig, and vineyards you did not plant. When you have eaten and are full, be careful! Do not forget the LORD."

Moses knew how quickly a full stomach can make a heart forget.

But words on a doorframe can remind a heart. They cannot make it love. After Joshua died, a new generation grew up that did not know the LORD and bowed to other gods.

Morning and night, king after king, the people kept saying, "Hear, O Israel," and still their hearts wandered off. They waited for the one God had promised to send.

At last a teacher came who did. He loved his Father with all his heart and soul and strength, at home and on the road, all the way to a wooden cross. When someone asked him which command mattered most, he answered, "Hear, O Israel."

On the third day after he died, two of his friends were walking sadly along a road. A stranger joined them and explained what Moses and all the prophets had written about him, and their hearts burned inside them. It was Jesus.