Tag: Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 32-34 Deep Diving Bible Study by Gordon Ramsay

The book of Deuteronomy Deep Diving Bible Study


The book of Deuteronomy Deep Diving Bible StudyGOOD MORNING!

Today’s Readings are Deuteronomy 32-34

Rabbit Trails
And just like that, we finish up not only the book of Deuteronomy but the foundational books of Scripture.
Our foundation is in place and now it is time to add on floors!

Important note: These foundations of Scripture are the straight edge by which all other books line up. When we disconnect the first or second floor, or even the attic, from the foundation of the house, it cannot support itself. It is the same with Scripture. The good news is that nothing we will read for the remainder of our Bible contradicts Scripture, so long as we keep our foundation in place. In fact, once we get to what is known as the “new” testament, we will see our Messiah and the apostles dedicating their lives to teaching from these books.

As we exit the first five books of the Bible, I want you to understand that for centuries those books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, & Deuteronomy, have been referred to as “The Torah” by Hebrews (and by YHWH) and the Greek word for these books is “the Pentateuch”. I want you to know these terms so that if you hear either of them you don’t mistakenly think they are referring to some book outside of the Bible. I confess that I used to think that myself!

Torah and Pentateuch are simply names for the first five books of the Bible, the foundational books of Scripture and of our God.

As Moses finalizes his life today, He issues warnings, hope, and the open path to redemption for YHWH’s beloved Israel when they fall short. These words are very important and the wisdom therein applicable to our lives and situation today.

I want to highlight a few verses for you: 

🌿Deut 32:46-47 46 he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. 47 For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”

The first time I really read that and actually saw what was being said, I was left stunned that I had never seen or heard those words before. Take these words to heart, for they are not empty words for us. 

🌿Deuteronomy 33:29 Happy are you, Oh Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by YHWH, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph! 

Whew. I can’t read that verse without rejoicing from my head to my soul! 

🌿At the end of Deuteronomy, YHWH Himself takes and buries Moses in an undisclosed place. We are told that Moses passed on in good health, full vigor, and with his eyes undimmed at the age of 120, the exact age YHWH determined to be the ideal human lifespan in Genesis 6:3.

Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated. Deut 34:7

🌿And Joshua, the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the people of Israel obeyed him and did as YHWH had commanded Moses. And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom YHWH knew face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders of YHWH sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of Israel. Deut 34:9-12

Goodness, what a statement to be made about someone. There is no need for fiction in our lives when we have these epic true stories of our beloved Father and His people! It’s hard to peel ourselves away once we really start reading it. 

I was talking with some friends about how we tend to see Moses not getting to see the Promised land as sad and unfair but notice how it is simply accepted by Moses, here at the end. He had worked hard, fought hard, and led these people with all that he had and then some. He had witnessed the hand of YHWH and had spoken, face to face (as the idiom states) with YHWH. In this final book he has carefully trained Joshua and reminded the nation of Israel of all that had been taught to them throughout the generations. I think he was ready and to pass on from this life in the full shalom and assurance of YHWH. The fact that the Father took him before his health declined, while still in the fullness of his vigor, looks to me as another blessing. 

Praises to our Father! His wisdom is infinite, His character unchanging, His grace poured out onto us day to day.

May the Father cause us to follow after Him with all of our heart, mind, and soul! 


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Deuteronomy 28-29 Deep Diving Bible Study by Gordon Ramsay

The book of Deuteronomy Deep Diving Bible Study


 

The book of Deuteronomy Deep Diving Bible Study

GOOD MORNING! 

Today’s readings are Deuteronomy 28-29

I feel a tangent coming on so feel free to skip if you want to get right to the reading. 😯

Rabbit Trails 

🌿Today we move on from the curses to the blessings (and back to the curses, but I digress…) If you’re anything like me, you really like the blessing part! That is human nature, to just want the good, none of the bad. The problem is that we want the good given to us with no requirements on our part. 

All of my life I’ve heard that salvation is a free gift, that we are saved by grace alone and there is nothing we could possibly do to earn it – and you know what? 

All of that is absolutely true.

But notice that these verses were not given to an unsaved people. They had already been chosen as God’s own. They had been shown grace time and again, and in return something is required of them. 

Just as with us, when we accept the grace and salvation that is given to us through faith in Messiah, we can’t just go on living as we did beforehand. 

There is more and often today, we miss it. 

The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and we must live a life worthy of being that vessel for the Holy Spirit. 

I’m not saying we’re to be perfect because we will naturally make mistakes – but we can’t let the whole “nobody’s perfect” excuse prevent us from pursuing Holiness – from attempting to live our lives in a manner that will please God.

In Leviticus 11:44-45, YHWH says “You must be holy because I am holy.”

In Leviticus 19:2 He says “Be holy because I, YHWH your God, am holy.”

And in Leviticus 20:7 YHWH says “be holy for I am YHWH your God.”

Then in 1 Peter 1:16, Peter reiterates this when he says:

“For it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” 

🌿Note: The New Testament is just folks teaching the “old” testament so you see a lot of quoting. 

In fact, 69% of the writings in 1 Peter are merely quotations from the “old testament”, or as Jesus and the apostles more accurately referred to this part of the Bible, “Scripture”.

We are to pursue the standards YHWH set for us. Whether you consider those to be the Ten Commandments alone or the Bible in its entirety – we can agree that it is always best to pursue Him, His truth, His model, and His standards of behavior for us. 

The great thing is that It is easy to do so because He gave us a living, breathing example in human form in his precious beloved son, our Messiah.

Those “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets used to be everywhere we turned. My husband wore one for years. But we’ve changed our thinking on that. 

Now, instead of asking “What Would Jesus Do?” We read our Bibles and ask “What DID Jesus Do?”- and that is the direction we go in.

Messiah is our ultimate example, so let’s live as closely to how He lived as possible.

🍐🍎🍇🍊🍓🍍🍏🍒🍐🍎

They will know us by our fruit! 

🍐🍎🍇🍊🍓🍍🍏🍒🍐🍎

🌿Deut 28:57 seems horrific, but go read 2 Kings 6:24-33.

🌿Deut 28:66-67 In a way, this describes life for a lot of people living outside of YHWH’s will today, in our own country. In fact, this describes what was once my life. 

🌿Deut 29:14-15 gives me goose bumps, do you see why? 

14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, 15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.

I believe that is partly a reference to us today.

🌿Deut 29:18-19

18 Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’…

Y’all. I’ve been that person!! 


Visit the Faith Homepage  • Read my statement of Faith • Print the reading plans

Begin at the beginning with our Genesis notes


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Deuteronomy 30-31 Deep Diving Bible Study by Gordon Ramsay

The book of Deuteronomy Deep Diving Bible Study


 

The book of Deuteronomy Deep Diving Bible StudyGOOD 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.


Visit the Faith Homepage  • Read my statement of Faith • Print the reading plans

Begin at the beginning with our Genesis notes


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