April 22, 2021
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Deuteronomy? Here’s today’s reading:
Deuteronomy 5 (NIV)
The Ten Commandments
1 Moses summoned all Israel and said:
Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. 2 The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3 It was not with our ancestors that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today.....Continue Reading
Once again I am struck by the simplicity and yet completeness of the ten commandments. The basic “right and wrong” of life and the “good and evil” behavior that the world recognizes. Even people who aren’t followers of Christ would admit that living out these simple instructions would keep the world a more loving and peaceful place!
Deuteronomy 5
Every time I read this it reminds me of growing up Catholic. Had to memorize these every year in elementary school. Google Catholic Ten Commandments. You will notice they took out the 2nd and made two out of the last. To much money in selling saint statues. Sorry. But true
Wow….that is really wrong!
I’ve become more and more convinced that God is concerned about His Word and how we treat it and translate it, not adding to it or taking away from it. I’m not legalistic about translations but I do think that we should be more careful about it.
John 2
God’s heart for man!
“Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!”
These are not the only things that God commands, but they are certainly a good focal point. In them is such a good foundation for how we are to interact with God and with each other. They establish God as the priority and reenforce His importance. They structure time in honoring one day over another and making it unique and set apart to God. They structure the family and establish the mother and father in a place of authority and put in place a mindset that helps the most fundamental structure in society function. They honor both life and marriage, aspects of existence that are even more fundamental. They honor property, work, personal responsibility, and honesty and free us from the need to compare ourselves to others. Yes a lot of life is addressed here and so many of societies ills can be shown to flow from man’s disregard of them.
I do like how God/Moses makes it personal to this new generation. He reminds them that they were there when God spoke this law. They heard His voice. And it was too awesome for them. It reenforces the responsibility we all have to come before God and recognize our accountability to Him for how we live our lives. None of us can say He hasn’t made His way clear……
28The Lordheard you when you spoke to me, and the Lordsaid to me, “I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said was good. 29Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
30“Go, tell them to return to their tents. 31But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.”
32So be careful to do what the Lordyour God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. 33Walk in obedience to all that the Lordyour God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.