April 23, 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 6 (NIV)
Love the Lord Your God
1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.....Continue Reading
Love the Lord! Moses is urging them to keep their hearts, minds, and eyes on God who has brought them through so very much and gave them the commandments to follow. As they enter the promised land of Canaan and experience prosperity like never before it will be so much easier to forget how you got there. We look to God in the “bad times” for help but do we remember Him in the “good times”. When we are on top of the mountain someone put us there and Moses knows that it is easy to take that simple fact for granted and doesn’t want them to forget!
Deuteronomy 6
Deuteronomy 5&6
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Deuteronomy 6:5 NIV
https://www.bible.com/111/deu.6.5.niv
How important chapter 6 is in light of chapter 5. Once we have the standards of God, obedience is the key that makes them work and obedience will take work to be successful. It takes focus and intentionality. It requires constant awareness and preoccupation. It is fitting for it always to be before us and always be part of our conversation. If there is ever a chapter that highlights the free will of man and how it needs to be formed and constrained, this is it! It is amazing that God bases our obedience to Him on love and fear. He desires our obedience to flow from relationship, regard and respect. He wants us to obey because we care for Him because we see how much He cares for us. And yet He realizes that there are parts of us that need to fear/respect Him in order to obey.
It is also interesting how forgetting God is linked to disobeying Him. How easy it is for us to set God aside when we don’t need Him and yet run and cling to Him when we do. It really defies the most fundamental aspect of approaching God: we don’t come to Him for the results of what He brings, we come to Him because of who He is and because of who He is we need Him regardless how things are going. So God asks us in this chapter to do what it takes to make our relationship with Him work and then KEEP IT GOING…….especially to the next generation…..
These were really the verses that convicted us to homeschool our children. I figured if they were away from me 6 hours a day, for the best part of the day! Then I certainly wouldn’t be teaching them diligently and it wouldn’t be as we sit and walk and rise.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
6 “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 5&6
4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lordis one. 5Love the Lordy our God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7Impress 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. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.