Month: March 2023

Deuteronomy 12:30 Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee: and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? Even so I will do likewise.

It is too easy to be tempted and ensnared by the gods of this world, so that our response to God’s goodness must be take heed, be careful. It is tempting to become syncretistic, which means we believe in God alright, but we still at the same time want to keep one foot in the world. We think we can have it both ways: God and Baal, God and Mammon, walk the way of God and the ways of the world. After Jesus gave us Life (land, kingdom) and we possessed it and He destroyed the Enemies, then we get complacent and go after the old life. The temptation is real and present, so we take heed. We remind ourself what we have been saved from and what we have been saved for.

They asked,”How did these nations serve their gods?” We ask, “What does the world have to offer?” Resist curiosity. The world offers more money, more control, and more popularity. We can’t resist, so we end up following two gods, living two ways, walking on two paths, and living two lives. No wonder we end up fragmented, broken, twisted, torn, and messed up. Elijah and Jesus are clear: you can’t have it both ways.

Taking heed involves two things: repentance and faith, recognizing our sin and taking hold of our Savior. The temptations of the world (and its gods) are subtle and do not look like ugly devils. Hear the Word. The Law reveals the Sin and the Gospel reveals the Savior.

Deuteronomy 12:2-3 Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.

After God’s people have possessed the Land that God gave, then they were to respond by destroying the places in the land where unbelievers worshipped their false demon gods. The response to God’s gift was a violent overthrow of the places where idol worship was going on. The violence is felt in the words destroy, overthrow, break, burn, and cut down. The Lord planned the takeover of the Kingdom of God to be total and complete. There was to be no compromise with pagan idolatry. No vestige of demon worship was to be left over.

The Lord gives the Kingdom, the Spirit, and the Life to us and plants it in us by grace. Then we are to possess it by faith. Jesus gives, we receive. But once we own the spiritual life within us, then we still need to root out the spiritual Enemies that go to war to prevent our settling in the Kingdom and enjoying God’s Life. There are places within the soul that oppose God and resist the Kingdom takeover. They may be pet sins, worry, anger, lust, fear of death, doubt, etc., etc. There are places where the devil has a foothold and tries to tempt us into sin and unbelief. Ephesians 4:27, “Give no opportunity (place) to the devil.”

Even though Jesus has given violent victory to us, we must still be willing to let the Spirit apply the Victory of Blood to the specific issues that still plague us. This is an ongoing process that will not be finished until we die. Daily repentance and faith will always be necessary for us. And we need not be afraid to take a spiritually violent approach to the self, the demons, and the idols that remain in the soul that has been taken over by Jesus. Destroy those places with applied faith.

Deuteronomy 11:28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known.

God gave the Commandments to us in order to bless us and give us a good life if we obey. But the opposite response, disobeying and turning aside, brings a curse and a life that is not so good. Blessing or curse is the result of obedience or disobedience. It is a consequence, not a reward or punishment. The outcome is not arbitrary (God will get you for that), but it is a principal built in to Creation and Life. Following the Rules produces a blessed life; Breaking the Rules a cursed life. God gave the Law for our good.

It is good, right, salutary, pleasant, beneficial, and productive to live according to God’s Word. Marriage and family life, community and social life, social and business interactions, personal health and wellbeing all run smoother, are more joyful and satisfying, and, in a word, blessed when we learn obedience to God, for He has our best interests in mind. But when things turn out badly in our physical, mental, emotional, business, social, and family life we have only ourselves to blame. Bad things come from our fault, our sin, our self. The world can only neglect, ignore, despise, reject, and deny God so long before it all falls apart.

Even though we brought the curse upon ourselves, God still loves us and wants the best life for us. So He sent His Son to live for us and die for us, thereby allowing the Lord to bless us with life. We respond with repentance, faith, and thanks.

Deuteronomy 11:18-20 Therefore shall ye lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates.

We can become forgetful, so we need constant reminders of the Law and the Gospel of God’s words. We do not come to faith in Jesus one time and that’s good enough for the rest of our life. We may be saved, but the power of the Gospel doesn’t affect our lives unless we are continually in the Word. The Word and the Spirit change lives.

Therefore, we respond to grace by laying it up in the heart and in the mind, will, and emotions. We meditate on the words of God and their meaning day and night; we memorize Bible verses; we study the Scriptures; we pray together in the family circle; we assemble together to hear the Gospel weekly; we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Word daily; we attend Sunday school and Bible study regularly; and we teach these words.

All of these activities are a routine part of the normal Christian life. Doing these things does not make one a Christian (Jesus does), but it is how the believer responds to grace. He believes that his faith must be maintained and strengthened through the gospel, bathed in the Word, and reminded again and again.

Deuteronomy 11:16 Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them.

Our response to God’s grace and salvation is to take heed to yourselves to make certain that you remain faithful to the One True God, the only God, the one who loves you and saves you. Pay attention to your own heart to know that you are still in the faith. Your soul (mind, will, and emotions) can be deceived. We can too easily think false thoughts, make bad decisions, and let negative emotions control us. We need to believe God who says that I, even I, can be deceived.

We do not respond by being so proud and presumptuous as to think we don’t need God, thereby turning aside and making SELF a god. Self is the most common idol god that sinners serve, and the most deceptive. Therefore, we take heed to ourselves, for we can be so easily deceived that we don’t even know we are making self a god. Thus Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:28, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” We repent and believe in preparation for receiving the Lord’s Supper. We also confess sin and confess Jesus daily; we confess that we are sinners in need of salvation and we confess that Jesus is our Salvation and our Lord. This is taking heed.

Deuteronomy 11:8 Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that you may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it.

Your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord which He did. In the previous verses Moses four times repeats the words, “what he did unto….” He is rehearsing what God the Lord did for His people in judgment on enemies, in mercy for Israel, and in provision for them. You have seen God act for your salvation, even if you were not there you have witnessed it yourself when you heard the Gospel Story repeated for you.

Hearing is believing; believing is seeing. So Jesus proclaims to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” We who alive today have not physically seen the suffering and dying Jesus nor the resurrected Lord, but we believe the eyewitnesses of the New Testament. By faith we have seen, and that is just as strong and as personal as if we were there to see what God did on the Cross and the Tomb. God grants sight and insight through the Gospel.

Therefore, because we too have heard and seen the Gospel (what God did), we will respond by keeping God’s Ten Words and by going in to possess the Kingdom of God. In other words, we receive Jesus, believe the Promise, and enter into the Kingdom to make it our true home. When we believe and are baptized we are born again through water and the Spirit we see and enter the Kingdom of God. We remember and make fresh this possession by daily repentance and faith. And by faith in Christ we keep the Commandments. He kept the Law for us, and we walk into God’s righteousness.

Deuteronomy 10:20 Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name.

This response gives the summary and the meaning of the First Commandment. Our response to the Gospel of Salvation is to fear, love, and trust in God above things. This is what believers who have been baptized and have come to faith in Jesus Christ do. This is the response of faith in Christ.

We fear God alone. Alone means that we fear nothing else, like death, disease, demons, and bad things. God delivers us from evil. God is the only source of all good, and we look to Him alone. “Whom shall we fear?” “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Fear nothing but God alone. This kind of trust is not possible for sinners. Everyday worry reveals this truth. Nevertheless, baptized believers are sometimes able to respond with true fear and wholehearted trust by the power of the Gospel and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

When God is feared (trusted) first and only, then we serve Him by serving others; we cleave (hold tight) to Him and His Word of Promise; and we swear by His Name, meaning we pray in Jesus’ name trusting Him alone for help in time of need.

Of course, we fail in keeping the First Commandment, but “there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” The forgiveness of sins keeps us on the path of life.

Deuteronomy 10:19 Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

The Bible says Love one another dozens of times. The second greatest commandment is Love your neighbor. Jesus says Love your enemies. Here Moses says Love the stranger. Indeed, we know that our response to the God who loves me and all people is to genuinely love every person, no matter the nearness or distance of our relationship.

It is easier to love family and intimate friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. Loving the neighbor may be a little harder for these are acquaintances we don’t have a close relationship with. It is hard to love your enemy, who hates you and doesn’t want a relationship with you, but God grants grace to forgive. But surprisingly the hardest is to love the stranger, whom we don’t know at all, an alien, a foreigner, someone of another race or language. The key, of course, is to reach out, make acquaintance, develop a relationship, and at least make them neighbors.

We have three reasons why can respond by loving the stranger: 1) “we love because He first loved us” is the most powerful motivator to love others; 2) the stranger may be Christ (“ye have done it unto me” Matthew 25:40) or an angel (“some have entertained angels unawares” Hebrews 13:2); 3) we were all strangers once ourselves in the land of Egypt (the world) we all were born strangers, foreigners, and aliens to God and His Kingdom, so we know the feeling and we know what it’s like to welcomed into the heavenly kingdom. Therefore, we love the stranger.

Deuteronomy 10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

It has always been odd that God would require such a ritual as circumcision. It is an outward symbol of an inward reality: the foreskin of the heart. A hint concerning the meaning is given here: be no more stiffnecked. Don’t resist the grace of God; don’t rebel against the Law of God. Stephen preached to the Jews on the day he was martyred: “You stiffnecked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you [Acts 7:51].”

Moses and Stephen are speaking also to us. A rebellious spirit is a hallmark of a sinner. Children chafe under the authority of parents, and teenagers rebel to break free and seek their own identity, and then stubbornness and rebellion characterize adults all through life. Rebellion is a natural, sinful, human reaction. If unchecked, it will prevent us from faith and salvation.

But the Holy Spirit overcomes our resistance with love, calls us by the Gospel, and persuades us with the truth of the Word. We need to recognize our own sinful stubbornness to appreciate the power of the Gospel and the work of the Spirit. He miraculously turns a stubborn and stiffnecked heart into a soft and good heart that receives the love of God. God’s love is strong enough to soften a hard heart.

Stiffneckedness still resides in a believer’s heart. God loves us enough to break our hearts so that it will receive the love and life of God. Circumcision of the heart, done by the Word and the Spirit, flows into NT Baptism, through which the old man drowns and dies and the Spirit indwells. The New Man has a soft and impressionable heart in which the cross is imprinted.

Deuteronomy 10:12-13 And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?

The Lord God had made a covenant with Israel: “This is what I have done for you, now in response this is what you will do for Me.” Moses recounts the second time God Himself wrote the Ten Words on tables of stone (Moses broke the first copy in the Golden Calf incident), and he placed them in the Ark of the Covenant.

After the Lord saved them and made them His people by Grace, their part of the covenant was to keep the ten stipulations. This what the Lord requires as a response to His Great Salvation: 1) Fear (believe) the Lord, 2) Walk (live) in His ways, 3) Love (be exclusively devoted to) Him, 4) Serve (surrender yourself for the good of others) the Lord by serving others, since God doesn’t need your service but others do, and 5) Keep (obey) the commandments, do what He says.

Our response to the Gospel encompasses all of life and all that we are (heart and soul). We hold nothing back, not reserving a minute for self, nor reserving a part of the soul for self. We die to self daily and live in Christ by faith always.

In truth, our response is pitiful. We woefully fail to live this way. But Jesus Christ faithfully laid down His Life for us, thereby forgiving our failure and granting complete success. Faith receives this grace gift in response to the Gospel, which changes our behavior and lifestyle.