Tag Archives: Deuteronomy 5-7

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2024 Bible Study — Impress God’s Commands Upon Our Hearts

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 5-7.

Moses recounts the Ten Commandments and makes some commentary on them.  He tells the Israelites that the purpose of God’s commands was so that it would go well for those who obeyed them.  Moses then tells them that they should have God’s commandments on their hearts and should impress them on their children.  We should strive to do the same thing.  Moses even told us how we can do that.  We do it by talking about God’s decrees and commands when we are at home, and when we travel; by talking about them when we get up and when we lie down; by putting reminders of them on our hands, our foreheads, and on our house, and in our houses.  We should strive to bring up God’s laws whenever and wherever we can.  We should carry things and have things in our houses which lead our children, our guests, and the strangers we meet ask us about God’s laws and what they mean to us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2023 Bible Study– Love The Lord Our God With All Of Our Heart, With All Of Our Soul, And With All Of Our Strength

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 5-7.

Moses recounts here how God spoke the Ten Commandments to the Children of Israel and how they were frightened by His voice.  Moses reminds them that God had spoken to them in order to incline their hearts to fear Him and obey His commands.  It is good for us to think about the times when God has done things which have led us to fear Him.  But we also need to remember why God wanted the Children of Israel, and us, to both fear and obey Him: so that it might go well for them (and us) and their children.  Moses goes on to emphasize the importance of loving God and obeying Him because we love Him.  We should write His commandments (or, perhaps, request that He write them) on our hearts.  We should talk about them when we are at home, and when we are not at home, when we get up in the morning, and when we lie down again.  Let us write them out in the open, so that others will know that we intend to obey them, and can call us to account when we fail to do so.  Moses gives the people, and us, two more reasons to make sure that God’s commands are written upon us and around us.  If we have references to God’s commands written upon the spaces we occupy (our homes, our cars, perhaps even our workspaces) we will be less likely to forget God when we receive His blessings.  And, if we have references to God’s commands written where others can see them, they may be drawn to obey them as well.

Moses also speaks here of another thing which is closely related to the above.  The Lord our God is the One and Only God.  There is no other.  Therefore, we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the worship practices of those around us who serve other gods.  They will try to draw us into their worship.  Let us be on guard to not allow that to happen.  But, even when they do not seek to draw us in, we may be tempted by their practices.  Let us not give into that temptation and be drawn away from God.  Let us not desire the fruits of those practices, even those which appear pleasurable.  And let the only pity we feel for them when they suffer the consequences of their sin be that which inspires us to call them to turn to God and to obey His commands.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2021 Love The Lord Your God With All That You Are

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 5-7.

The translators footnote on verse 3 of chapter 5 says that it could be translated as “It was not only with our parents that the Lord made this covenant.”  I suspect that to the original readers of that verse it conveyed both that and the way in which the NIV translators chose to translate it.  Each and every one of us must choose to accept God’s covenant for themselves, whether or not our parents did so.  However, I want to focus on chapter 6 verses 4 to 7.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

I really find this to be inspirational.  First, it contains what Jesus tells us is the greatest commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”  I could spend my whole blog today on that, but I want to focus on what comes next.  God’s commands should be in our hearts at all times.  We should talk about them when we are at home, and when we travel.  We should talk about them as we go to bed, and when we get up in the morning.  We should spend all day every day thinking about what God wants us to do, and then doing it.  Of course, that follows from loving God with all of our heart, soul, and strength, but sometimes we need to spell that out.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2020 Bible Study — Love God With All That You Have and Are

 

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 5-7.

I really liked doing something different yesterday.  Perhaps next year I will seek out a different daily Bible reading schedule.  Now I return to reading my way through the Bible.  Starting today Moses presented the generation of Israelites who would enter the Promised Land with God’s commands for them which He had given to the previous generation.  Many of those listening to Moses on this day had been present when the commands were first given, but they were young and not yet responsible adults when they heard them.  Moses starts by repeating, with slightly different wording, what we know as the Ten Commandments.  In a way, these ten commands build upon each other.  I really think of them from two directions.  First, following the commands which come later in this list of ten is meaningless if you do not follow the ones which come before.  It is of no consequence that you do not steal if you murder someone.  It is of no consequence that you do not murder if you worship anything other than God.  However, as I said, it also goes the other way.  If you murder or steal, you clearly do not worship only God.

Then in chapter 6 Moses says something which tells us the most important part of making any set of rules work.  If we wish to truly be made holy by God we must worship and obey Him with our whole being, we must seek His will whole-heartedly.  Pleasing Him must be our chief desire.  All else must be subordinate to that.  If we do that, we will not look for loopholes or ways to get around God’s commands.  “Do not murder” means that we should value the lives of others.  “Do not steal” means that we should respect others ownership of the things which they have.  Jesus was absolutely correct, all of God’s other commands follow from two commands.  Actually, all other commands follow from this one: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all of your strength.  However, the second command is one that offers clarification as to what doing the first one means: Love your neighbor as your love yourself.  This second one follows from the first, but needs to be stated so that people cannot claim they did not realize that the first one meant the second one.  All of the other commands are just applications of these two.

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2019 Bible Study — Do God’s Will With All Of Your Being

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 5-7.

Moses made a second presentation to the Israelites where he laid out the specifics of the covenant which he called on them to keep in his first address. He starts off by restating the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Statements. He reminds the people that God has spoken these Words directly to the people of Israel at Mt Sinai. I was struck by a different understanding of one of them than how I had previously understood it. The one I am referring to I learned as, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,…” However, in the NLT it reads, “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God.” I learned the first one to mean that you should not use God’s name as an expletive. The second reads to me as a warning against using God to promote our own self-interest. When you use the name of God, or a quote from the Bible, to support the position you took on an issue you are running a significant risk of violating this command. When tempted to use the Bible, or your religious beliefs, to bolster your arguments, ask yourself this, “Did I come to my belief because of that Bible passage? Or, do I understand that Bible passage that way because of my belief?” If the former, then the passage is possibly relevant to the discussion. If the latter, use the passage with extreme caution.

Moses goes on to say that we must love God with all of our being. We should commit ourselves to him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our strength, with every ounce of what we are. I cannot emphasize enough the value of what Moses says here:

And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The point of all of the above is that we should go overboard to make sure we know and remember God’s commands. Actually, it tells us that there is no such thing as going overboard in the attempt to know and remember God’s commands. By going back again and again and reading, reciting, learning what God has told us of His will we learn how to not misuse His name. Of course it is not enough to know God’s commands backwards and forwards. We must also desire to DO His will.

Finally for today, Moses reminded the Israelites that God did not choose them because of anything they were or had done. God chose them because He loved them. They did not deserve God’s love, just as we do not deserve God’s love. God loved them because He chose to love them, just as He chooses to love us. Because He loves us, He has told us what we must do to be blessed, but if we reject Him and His instructions He will not hesitate to bring down the full consequences of our actions upon us. The Bible contains account after account of those who suffered the consequences of rejecting God.

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2018 Bible Study — Focusing On God’s Will and On Loving Him

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 5-7.

    The passage begins with Moses restating the Ten Commandments (as we know them), which are referred to in Hebrew as the “Ten Words” or “Ten Sayings”. Moses reminds his audience that these words were spoken by God to all of those assembled before the mountain at Mt. Sinai. Moses instructed his audience to wholly commit themselves to obeying the commandments which God had given them. I really love what Moses says in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. God is our only god and we must love Him with all of our being, with our minds, our emotions, and our physical abilities. Truly loving God means doing as He has instructed us. In order to be sure that we do as He has instructed we need to repeat God’s commands again and again, to ourselves, to our children, and to our neighbors. Let us talk about God’s will for our lives, both long term and for the next minute, when we are at home, at work, or on vacation, when we get up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. How does what I am doing right now fit into the instructions which God has given me?

    Moses goes on from there to remind the Children of Israel that God did not choose them because of how wonderful they were. He chose them because He loved them. The same is true of us today. God did not choose us because we were wonderful. In fact, we were the opposite of wonderful when God chose us. Each and every one of us has done terrible, horrible things deserving of complete condemnation, but God has chosen to redeem us and transform us. If we accept His transformation of ourselves we need fear no one and nothing. God will not allow anyone or anything to disrupt the transformation He has in mind for us, although He will not force us to accept that transformation. Part of accepting God’s transformation is ridding ourselves of the desire for the detestable things which we did before we encountered Him.

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2017 Bible Study — Loving God With All That We Are

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 5-7.

    When I first read through this there were several things which I thought might take a place of prominence in my blog today. There is the restating of the Ten Commandments (or, as I mentioned when they came up in Exodus, the Ten Sayings). There is the response of the people of Israel to hearing God speak directly to them. There is the command to drive out the people living in the Promised Land and to have no social interaction with them. All of those could be explored in some depth. However, when I went back through to decide how to word what I wanted to say, these verses really spoke to me (chapter 6:4-8).

Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders.

    We are called to love God with all that we have, all of our heart(spirit), all of our soul, and all of our strength(body). Or to put that in the terms of Freud’s psychological terms, we are to love God with all of our id, all of our ego, and all of our superego. I am going to state this one more way. We are to love God with all of our physical being, with all of our self-identity, and with all of our spiritual nature, our desire to be and do good. That right there strikes me pretty strongly, but the next part cranks that up a notch (or maybe only explains what the previous means).
    We are to repeat God’s instructions again and again, talk about them when we are at home and when we are away, discuss them when we get up in the morning and as we prepare to go to bed. In other words, there should be no time, and no place, where God’s instructions, where what God desires us to do, is not our focus. And to ensure that it is our focus, that it is the center of what we are thinking, we should be talking about it. How does God want us to do our jobs? How does God want us to react to that driver who just cut us off in traffic? What does God want us to say to the rude person in the grocery store (or wherever else we meet them)? I could continue this, but the key question is this, how does what I am doing RIGHT NOW show that I love God with all that I am?

Daily Bible Study

March 1, 2016 Bible Study — Be Obsessive About Obeying God

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 5-7.

    Once Moses completed his summary of what happened to the children of Israel from the time they left Mt. Sinai until they arrived on the eastern bank of the Jordan River he reviewed the commands which God had given the people of Israel during that time. He listed once again the Ten Commandments. I was struck by a different meaning to one of them than I had ever seen before. That one is “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God.” When I was growing up, I learned that it meant that I should not use “Jesus” or “God” as exclamations. While it is true that we should not use them in that way, that is not what this command means. This command is telling us that we should not use God’s name and reputation to commit fraud. We should not claim to be acting in God’s name when we are merely striving to advance our own interests. Nor should we claim to be acting in God’s name in order to advance any interests other than God’s.

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    Moses went on to tell the people of Israel that they must commit themselves wholeheartedly to God’s commands. We are to repeat them again and again, to talk about them wherever we are, whether at home or away. Moses told the people to tie them to their hands and their foreheads, to write God’s commands on their doorposts and their gateways. We should be talking about God’s commands until people are sick of hearing it. However, this is not about telling others what they should be doing. When we talk about God’s commands, we need to talk about what it means for ourselves. All of our hearts, souls, and minds should be dedicated to determining how we can do what God desires. Let us be obsessed with obeying God’s commands.