GOOD MORNING SIBLINGS!
Today’s readings are Deuteronomy 30-31
Rabbit Trails
🌿I LOVE THIS PART OF DEUTERONOMY! This is one of my favorite speeches. I want to encourage you to read it out loud, as if Moses Himself is saying it to you. Don’t just let it be as if words on a white page but bring it to life in your mind. Visualize the scene in which He shares this ageless wisdom. Put yourself there and really experience it.
🌿Begin in Deuteronomy 30:2 and 30:6 where we see snippets of something else we’ve read.
-Let’s go back to the greatest commandment, which we talked about recently, the “Shema” as it is otherwise known.
YHWH gives it to us in Deuteronomy 6:4 and Messiah responds by quoting it when asked what the greatest commandment is in Mark 12.
📖Here O’ Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.📖
Today, Moses is reminding of this as our duty again in his speech and then he goes on to tell us what will come about based on whether or not we do this.
🌿I think some of the real depth of meaning of this verse is lost on us today. Maybe it’s because we are used to the verse that we don’t think of it that much, but maybe we need to reframe it and see if there is a deeper Hebrew meaning that we can pull out to help us wrap our heads around what the real intent is.
If we look at Deuteronomy 30:6 on Biblehub it comes up like this:
https://biblehub.com/interlinear/deuteronomy/30-6.htm
Click the word nap̄·še·ḵā above the phrase “your soul” and see how it is used elsewhere in the Bible as “your life” “thy life”, etc.
Please don’t take my word for it but go look for yourself. Search the scriptures, always. You can also do the same for Deuteronomy 30:2
Now let’s look at Deuteronomy 30:6 with this new phrase inserted and see if it means a little more to our 2018 minds.
📖…So that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your LIFE, that you may live.📖
Okay, maybe my brain just needs a little more spelling out but to me, that made a lot more sense and it really changes things. I mean, WOW! That was just a huge lightbulb moment for me.💡
I’m not just to love YHWH with my heart and my free time, on one day of the week or when I have a little time off work and feel in the mood to read my Bible.
I am to love Him with my entire LIFE.
EVERYTHING I have, all that is “mine” is on loan from Him and used to bring Him glory. I am to live, breathe, speak, act, and even think as a child of God at all possible times. What does this look like? To love Him this much? What will I do as a result of this?
I will speak His love language – obedience. I will honor Him, I will listen to Him, I will heed His wisdom. I will hold His words in reverence, and I will realize that I am His representative in all that I do and it is my responsibility to make sure I am not misrepresenting Him or leading people away from His Word.
It is a great honor and responsibility, but He is very clear in today’s readings that He is not leaving us alone in this. When we choose the path of Life, He is with us and within us, watching over and prospering all that we do. (I am not referring to man’s idea of temporary wealth but eternal wealth).
🌿CHOOSE LIFE Deut 30:15-20
📖See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Therefore choose life…📖
Obedience to YHWH is not a burden. Jesus said His yoke is light and His burden is easy. However, We have the free will to choose the road to blessings or the road to curses. Each day we must make that choice anew.
Recently in my life I’ve witnessed the tragedy of someone living a life within God’s parameters only to turn against Him in their final years. It breaks my heart to see what happens as everything they’ve loved dissolves around them as a result. They were on one path and they choose to go on another and what YHWH said would happen is exactly what happened. We can always trust our Father to tell the truth.
🌿With this in mind, it is a tremendous blessing that I am ever thankful for that I must turn to the Father each day for instruction on how to live. He orchestrates our lives so that He is an integral part in them, if we choose to make Him so.
🌿I was talking to a friend this morning about a decision she had to make wherein there is no clear scriptural guidelines on how to respond. We had both diligently searched the scripture and were left to talk it out with one another, pray for wisdom, and make the best decision she could make based on knowing the character of God and His guidelines in other areas of daily living within Scripture.
We talked about, in the end, what a blessing it was that we have decisions like this that require us to continually seek Him in our lives, causing us to depend on Him rather than lean on our own understanding. This is why it is so important to study the Word of God, so that we know His character, His commandments, His patterns, and His responses – and the standard He has set for and expects of His people.
Our precious Messiah even came to show us what it looks like to walk according to the ways of YHWH.
🌿As Moses prepares for the end of his life, he is carefully choosing the wisdom YHWH wants Him to impart to the people. These people that He has led and loved are to be without Him and it is His strongest hope that they will heed the words of YHWH, their God, and remain steadfast in Him. Every syllable of this chapter should be given great weight in our lives as we read it. I encourage you to read it at least a few times, with knowledge that YHWH’s wisdom and words are timeless and always ring true.
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