Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Father’s Day, June 20-21, 2026
“Conditional Love vs. Unconditional Love” Deuteronomy 7:6-9
Curt Engle Ascension Lutheran Church Littleton, Colorado
Someone once said, kids spell love differently than adults. Adults spell it L‑O‑V‑E.
But kids? They spell it T‑I‑M‑E.
A busy pastor and speaker named Josh McDowell learned that truth in a powerful way. His schedule was full, his calendar was packed, and his audiences were large. So, on this one particular trip, he decided to bring along his 10‑year‑old son, Sean.
During the trip, McDowell was invited to speak at the pregame chapel for the San Diego Chargers. After chapel, they were escorted to their seats—excellent seats, right down front near the 50‑yard line. The stadium was full. Over fifty thousand people packed the stands, cheering, shouting, and roaring so loudly it was almost overwhelming.
As the game unfolded, McDowell quietly put his arm around his son and said,
“Son, look at all these people.”
Sean slowly turned all the way around in his seat, staring in every direction—especially up into the highest sections. To his young eyes, it felt like the whole world was there. He said, “Wow, Dad… that’s a lot of people.”
His father looked at him and said something that would mark that boy for life.
“Yes, it is. but you know what? You mean more to me than all of them put together. Son, what you think of me as your father, matters more to me than the opinions of every single person in this stadium.”
Sean’s eyes grew wide. He looked again at the massive crowd and asked, almost in disbelief,
“Really, Dad? More than all of them?”
His father nodded and leaned in closer to his son. Sean looked up and saw that his father’s attention was fixed on him. Sean smiled. And right there in the middle of that enormous stadium, he felt secure, known, and deeply valued. He knew he mattered to his father.
And that’s the kind of love our heavenly Father shows us—not impressed by crowds, not distracted by noise, but fully attentive to His children.
Now, just as Sean had a wonderful moment of comfort at the football stadium, our Heavenly Father gives us a similar moment of comfort when we hear the first part of our reading today from Deuteronomy 7, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.”
This text was written approximately 1406 B.C. A 120-year-old Moses, who is nearing the end of his earthly life, is giving a farewell address to the people of Israel in a series of three sermons. They had spent 40 years wandering in the Sinai desert as punishment for not entering Canaan as God had commanded them to do, after He had delivered them out of Egypt.
In his first sermon, recorded in Deuteronomy chapter 5, Moses reviews the Ten Commandments and the promise God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of the land across the river Jordan they were given to enter and possess. In his second sermon, Moses tells them to teach their children the commandments well and rehearses the battle plan once they cross the Jordan and enter the Promised Land of Canaan.
Then Moses comes to our text today—his third sermon—where, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Moses tells the Israelites that God is telling them: By the way, remember I love you. You’re my treasure—my special, chosen, holy people. The Israelites must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when Moses gave them God’s words of reassurance.
The text has one complication, however. The last verse is the promise of God’s covenant of love, but it’s conditional. Deuteronomy 7:9 states, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.” The Old Covenant—the covenant God set up with Israel on mount Sinai—includes many conditional statements. Verse 9 of our text for today is one of them: if we love God and keep his commandments, then we receive God’s covenant of love.
We might look at God’s law and think, “I could do that.”
But the truth is, the Old Covenant was never meant to save us.
Not because there was anything wrong with the law—but because there’s something wrong with us.
Paul tells us in Romans 3 that God gave the law to show us something deeper.
The law wasn’t there to prove how strong we are—it was there to reveal how much we need help.
It shows us that we can’t save ourselves.
So it points us beyond ourselves… to something greater that only God can provide.
And with those in Christ, those who believe in His Son, God has replaced the old covenant of love. “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” In verse nine, God makes a promise, but it is on the condition we that keep his laws perfectly. And we know from our life experience, that this is impossible. So, when God puts these impossible conditions for receiving His love, He tugs on our hearts and then adds something very disheartening.
So where does God go from here? Well, flash forward 800 years, to around 600 B.C. He first mentions the New Covenant, in Jeremiah 31, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother , saying ‘know the Lord.’ For they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Here Jeremiah points ahead to Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection that won forgiveness of sins for all people.
Jeremiah’s prophecy came true. This is really how God our heavenly Father backs and fulfills his promise: by giving us his one and only Son—the crown jewel of his kingdom—enabling us to receive the covenant of grace.
Saint Paul writes about this in his letter to the Ephesians, “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will… In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
Because God chose us, we are holy and blameless. He did not choose us because we were holy and blameless. Likewise, God has adopted us through Christ because we needed a Father—not because he needed children. We are orphans without Christ.
He also tells us that his love for us is complete, constant, and unconditional. We cannot earn it. We cannot escape it. We cannot erase it. He is disappointed when we disobey Him, saddened when we stray from Him, sorrowful when we sin. But he never—never, never—stops loving us!
Saint Paul says this without a doubt, “ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is an expression of unconditional love in its purest form (Romans 8:38-39).
Remember Pastor McDowell’s example of unconditional love for his son at the football stadium. How can we forget the moment he made his child feel secure and significant?
In a similar way, Holy Scripture reveals something even greater: in the midst of this noisy and distracted world, our Heavenly Father leans in close and reminds us; you are not one among many to me; you are my beloved!
That is how much God loves us and gives us a game plan for our lives!
When we think of this, how will it affect our love toward our families? Will it be conditional or unconditional? How will this affect our relationship with our church family here at Ascension? Will it be conditional or unconditional? Or how about with our co-workers? Will our love for them be conditional or unconditional? In the middle of life’s football stadiums we can and lean in say “you matter no matter what.”
When someone asks why you show this love, what answer can you give other than the one Moses gave? “I just remember God loves me. I’m His treasured possession. Out of all the people on the face of the earth, I am one of God’s special, chosen, holy people!”
All because of God’s unconditional love shown to me in and through Jesus Christ.
To him be all the glory. Amen.
