Friday, February 14, 2014

Speaking of love...

...I am really lovin' Deuteronomy because of all the LOVE that is in it! :)
Did you think Deuteronomy was just a repeating of all the laws for the next generation of Israelites? Think again! It's way cooler than a repeat. :)
Even though it is more than a repeat, I have certainly been appreciating how Moses has been repeating the laws. Maybe it's the "teacher" in me that is impressed with Moses' pedagogy. :) He's not just listing off a bunch of rules--he's giving reasoning behind it and lots of encouragement to remember and recall ALL that God has done for them. Most often the reasoning Moses gives is 1 of 3 things :
"So that it may go well with you..."
"So that you will not forget the Lord..."
"So that the other nations will see that the Lord is the one true God..."
Can you think of better reasons for why you should obey a command? I know I can't! :)

But even more than the reasons, I really love that Moses keeps telling the Israelites is how much God LOVES them & how incredibly special the Israelites are to Him. It's pretty obvious that Moses really, really wants the Israelites to understand this about themselves! Check it out...

The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as He did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.

Observe them [the decrees & laws] carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of His inheritance, as you now are.

The Lord said..."Oh, 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."

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession.

But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath He swore to your ancestors that He brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharoah, king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments. 

Yet the Lord set His affection on your ancestors and loved them; He chose you, their descendants, above all the nations--as it is today.

Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be His treasured possession.

I think the reason that Moses tried to really get the Israelites to understand that they are a treasured possession, is to give them understanding and motivation behind why the laws are important and why they should try to follow them.

I think the same is still true today. No, we don't follow all the same laws as OT Israelites, but there are certainly some things that Christians should not do, not to mention the 10 Commandments. Why? Well, we could say because God told us not to. End of story.

Which would be true. But what if instead, we said that it's because we're God's treasured possession, His inheritance, and we want Him to get His full inheritance from our life? We don't want to do anything that hinders that. What if instead, we say that we don't choose to sin because we love God and want to please Him with our lives?

I can't think of any higher motivation of doing the "right thing" than wanting to please someone whom you know loves you a whole bunch and who you love in return.

Do you understand this for yourself? If you're struggling with a particular active sin or maybe more passive sin, I encourage you to ask the Lord to reveal more of His love to you and to help you receive it. The more of God's love that you have in your heart, the less room you'll have for anything else that's not of Him! :)

In reflection of the day that's all about LOVE, my prayer is that you seriously consider that YOU are also God's treasured possession and His inheritance that He set His affection on long ago.