Deut 13:4, You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. 
This morning’s reading puts front and center the requirement that God sets before His people. He is not fooling around with what He demands from His Chosen Ones. This entire chapter focuses on the first commandment and the need to love the Lord with all our hearts and minds and souls and beings. There is no leeway for doing anything other than giving the Lord God Jehovah the very best and earnest and complete focus of our lives. Nothing less than that will be acceptable before Him. 
We will briefly jump ahead to the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ as He was being asked by the young lawyer concerning which was the greatest commandment. We will read His response in two of the gospels because one builds and expands upon the other. 
The first is Matt 22:36-38. Matt 22:36-38, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And He 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 foremost commandment. 
Jesus was highlighting the complete manner in which the people were supposed to have honored, obeyed, dedicated themselves to, and loved the Lord God Almighty throughout all the centuries of His expressed dealings with them as His people. There was the full emphasis that the commitment to the Lord was to be with the totality of their functioning beings, heart, soul, and mind. If this had been the case, the nation would have known the full measure of the complete blessing of the Lord upon them.
Then, in Mark 12:29+30, Our Lord takes it to the depth of the very core of our human essence. As is recorded in this recounting of the response to this question, Christ makes it abundantly clear that it is expected that we love the Lord Alone as the Only God. That love is to be the whole focal and fundamental nature of our being.  
Mark 12:29+30, Jesus answered, "The foremost is, '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 mind, and with all your strength.' Note that in this instance, along with our heart and our soul and our mind, we are also to love the Lord Our God with all our strength. There is no withholding of any portion of our lives from the call to love the Lord Our God to the utmost quintessence of who we are and how we function on this earth. 
In returning to this 13th Chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses is detailing just how much the Lord is to mean to His people. Everything that we consider important and necessary, every relationship with which we are involved, everything we do and are and hope to be, must first be set in our love for the Lord! Nothing is to distract or to diminish the value of our heart’s dedication to Our God. He, Alone is One Lord, The Lord, Our Lord, The Lord God Almighty, The Creator of Heaven and earth. He, singly, is worthy of the whole essence of our commitment and consecration. 
The fact of the matter, as laid before us by both Moses and the Prophets of the Old Testament, and the Apostles of the New Testament, and most especially, as we have already read, by Our Lord Jesus Christ, is that God is to have the revered and single throne of love and honor and obedience in our lives. He is the very source of our lives. Our every consideration of Him is to be anchored in the truth that He is absolutely indispensable and essential as our life. He, Alone, is worthy of our total love, total commitment, and total allegiance. 
This is such a challenging view of our relationship with God which should cause all of us to go before Him in absolute introspection as to whether we truly and consciously are so focally dedicated to Him in our walk on this earth. This is a direct confrontation to the depth of our love for the Lord. It is a challenge to our motivation to bring Him our worship and our praise and our adoration more than just each Sunday morning. It is the testing of our commitment to pray to Him with reliability and with faithful hearts that are devoted to pleasing Him. Many of us do those honoring and Christian behaviors with the conscious concern to bless the Lord to the best of our limited scope of human understanding.
However, what is before you and before me in this chapter is the presentation of just how thoroughly and how fully and how utterly our hearts and minds and thoughts and behaviors are staunchly dedicated to Him beyond just the general sense of being a believer. 
There are very, very few people who can read this chapter without consciously setting aside the direct dictate of the Lord against anyone who would lead us astray. It is not easy to think of having to be the one who would cast the first stone against our beloved husband or wife or child or sibling or dearest friend if they were trying to seduce us to worship the gods and idols of this age. Would we so sincerely remove their influence from us if they were tempting us to set aside the place that He only is to have in our hearts and in our minds and in our thoughts and in our behavior? Would we willing choose to castigate their influence from us if they were tempting us to not go before the Lord in our constant prayers and worship and adoration? What stand would we take against anyone who was trying to cause us to shirk our commitment to God for a dalliance with some other god, be that money, or fame, or personal significance or forsaking the fellowship or any other influence after the idols and gods of this realm? Let us realize that this is an absolute challenge against everything other than God in our lives.  
How committed are we to the Lord that we could utterly abase ourselves of all other distractions and persuasions that would detract and dissuade us from our absolute dedication to love the Lord with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength? This is not some Old Testament Law that was spoken all those ages ago and is now no longer socially acceptable. 
These are the very words of Our Lord Jesus Christ. His Word will stand forever! Matt 24:35, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away. 
This is not something that we can minimize as no longer pertinent or applicable. It is not the easy discarding of the regimen and the ordinances as only for a people who had nothing else with which to occupy their time and energy. 
That is what we often try to do, when we are truly honest with ourselves and with the Lord. We argue that the times have changed. Now the social patterns of behavior are immensely different. We theorize that God can not possibly expect us to give Him all the time and energy and effort that was demanded of that people in those ages of past history. 
But still, we come back to the words of Christ our Lord … and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' It is such a detailed echo of this morning’s passage, You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. 
Admittedly, we no longer stone those beloved ones who would lead us astray. We no longer utterly destroy those towns and villages and cities which promote our following other false and idolatrous gods. But we are still to love the Lord with the totality of our beings. We are to listen to Him and we are to obey Him and we are especially to cling to Him. We are to know Him as the only source and the very focal reason that we have our life on this earth. 
In accordance with that reality, our whole purpose in this life is no longer to be set in us and our seeking after the pleasures of this age to try to make us happy or successful or popular or wealthy or honored. It is all to be completely anchored and cemented into that which shows that we love God above all else, every moment of every day of our lives on this earth. He is to be the constantly expressed goal and purpose of all that we do. He is to infuse everything from the moment we rise in the morning until the last conscious thought before sleep at night. When we wake through the night hours or as we go from appointment to appointment, it is all to be that which honors the Lord in all our interactions and in all our discussions and in all our actions and most especially in all our reactions.
As we read in Deut 6:13-15, we need to have the continual awareness set into our minds and hearts of unto Whom we live our lives. It is to be a deliberate turning away from serving ourselves and our interests and our desires, to that which is a living sacrifice and service to God, Alone. 
Deut 6:13-15, You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him, and swear by His name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God; otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth. 
    	As Moses so declared at the end of this Book of Deuteronomy, in Deut 30:19+20, he was faithful in telling the second generation all that they, and we, need to do as unto the Lord. There is a tremendous need to be vigilant and extremely serious in all our dealings with the Lord God Almighty!. 
	Deut 30:19+20, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." 
    	In Joshua 22:5 it is made very clear to the people how they were to honor and to obey the every precept of the Lord. As Joshua dismissed the tribes who were to return to the other side of the Jordan, he encouraged them to never forget unto Whom they owed their absolute and complete allegiance.
Josh 22:5, Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul." It is precisely the same message that was detailed by Moses and then later by Jesus.
Joshua reinforced to the nation that they were to adhere to the Lord all the days of their lives in Josh 23:8. Josh 23:8, But you are to cling to the Lord your God, as you have done to this day. 
This is not something that is just a casual acquaintance with the Lord, giving Him a day or so a week when we come together in some ritual or custom or act of habit. To cling to the Lord is to be completely attached to Him, holding onto Him with all our strength and effort. It is that picture that we see of children dearly grasping their parents with all their love and their hearts and their will and their minds and their strength, never wanting to let go.
Sadly, the nations would let go of the Lord and refuse to cling to Him. They did go after the other gods of the surrounding nations. In 2 Kings 23:3, we are told of how King Josiah turned his heart and the heart of the people once again back to the Lord God Whom they had forgotten and denied. 
2 Kings 23:3, And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant. 
King Josiah removed the images and the idols and all the instruments that had been used to worship those false gods. He sought to honor the Lord fully and completely in order to show God that His Chosen people once more desired His presence and His glory again in their midst. Josiah did everything he could with all his heart to honor God in full accordance with all that the Lord deserved from His people.
The Prophet Jeremiah also gave voice to the words of the Lord in Jer 7:23, as God again had to call His people back to Himself. He wanted them to know what would be their joy and their well-being if they would willingly honor and obey Him with the totality of their hearts and minds and souls. 
Jer 7:23, "But this is what I commanded them, saying, 'Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.' 
    	Our final passages of the morning are from the Apostle Paul in his letters to the New Testament churches. Please keep in mind these are written for the churches even of this very day. While it might be convenient for us to nay say the Old Testament, we can not do so with the encouragement that we receive and are to live at this very time in our history as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. These writings expound upon that which we have from God throughout His Old Testament Word. It is that which the Lord Jesus, Himself, gave us as we considered at the beginning of this discussion.
	The first is found in Rom 6:12+13. Rom 6:12+13, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 
	Since we are now made alive, raised from the dead through the grace and the mercy and the resurrection power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, our lives should give full evidence to that fact! We are to present ourselves to God for His perfect plan and purpose to be fulfilled in our lives. Because of His tremendous work in us, our whole essence is to be dedicated completely and thoroughly and absolutely in the every fiber of our beings unto His glory.
	Then in Col 1:9-14, if you would please turn to it, we have the need expressed to keep each other in prayer. We stand together for the full manifestation of all that we have been seeing as necessity in our lives. We should hold each other up in the course of what must be in place in our hearts and minds and beings with the needed expenditure of energy for the full love of God in His corporate church as well as in each individual believer.
	Col 1:9-14, For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. 
    	And our last passage of encouragement to so love God to the infinite depths of our beings is 1 Thess 4:1. This is our duty in the excellent service that we are to render faithfully and fully unto the Lord God. 1 Thess 4:1, Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you may excel still more. So be it!
You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. Amen. 

	This morning’s benediction is John 4:23+24. "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." Amen.