Day 072 (Deuteronomy 5-7) - Year 7
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Yesterday, Moses transitioned out of telling the new generation of Israelites about their history and segued into telling them about their future. He'll do a little back and forth like this throughout this conversation. When we left off, he was giving an introduction to the laws, and today he continues that conversation, starting with the Ten Commandments. And here's an interesting thing about these two tablets mentioned in 522—

We often see them as having five commandments on each tablet, but the way treaties were written back then usually involved making two copies of the treaty, one for each party. So we can't know for sure unless one of you has access to the Ark of the Covenant and just didn't tell me, but all Ten Commandments were probably on both tablets.

Before Moses goes over the Ten Commandments, he starts out by telling them that God's covenant is not with their fathers. It's with them. And yes, of course, it was also with their fathers. But Moses is emphasizing here that they have their own relationship with God. This is not a thing to be received secondhand. God is also making the covenant with their generation directly. And even though for many of these people, God didn't technically rescue them out of Egyptian slavery, still, He did.

Because if he hadn't rescued their parents, they would have been in slavery as well. Moses reiterates the Ten Commandments to this new generation and tells them how their parents had received these words with joy and gratitude. They had a proper awe and fear of God in that moment, even though, as we know, it was temporary. In chapter 6, we encounter the beginning of a prayer that has become the chief prayer of the Jewish people. It's called the Shema.

Shema means here, and here is the first word of the prayer. And it's also what we're being called to do in the text. Religious Jews usually pray this prayer twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, and they often cover their eyes with their right hand when they pray to increase their focus during the prayer. The Shema includes two other paragraphs from elsewhere in Scripture, but it opens here in 6, 4-6 with these words.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. First of all, you may recognize part of this as a quote from Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy. In fact, there are at least three verses in today's reading that Jesus quoted—

Second, while we believe that God is one, most commentaries point out that this statement, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, is not a reference to God's internal unity, but to His superiority and exclusivity. It's like saying, Yahweh is our God. He's the only God for us. Third, you may notice that there's no, with all your mind, like when Jesus said it.

That's because the ancient Hebrew language conflates the words for heart and mind. So it is included in this text, even if not directly stated. In Aramaic, which Jesus spoke, and in English, the ideas for heart and mind are different. Which is why Jesus adds that word to his quote, even though he's not adding the meaning to his quote.

The Shema goes on to say that God's words should fill our hearts and our mouths and our minds and our lives. When we're sitting, walking, lying down, or waking, we should be mindful of God. His words should be on our hands and eyes. Some religious Jews do this via the phylacteries we've talked about before. But if you're taking this more figuratively than literally, it could mean that God's work should be the framework through which you do all your actions and through which you see the world.

and it should be on your homes and on your gates. And some religious Jews obey this literally by putting scripture on their doorposts in a small scroll box called a mezuzah. But you might also keep the spirit of this law by having reminders of God in your home, by building your home around God and His Word. We not only want to have reminders of God around us, but we also want to be a reminder of God to those around us, because we carry His Spirit with us everywhere we go.

When the ESV Study Bible is talking about the importance of remembering God, it puts it this way: To forget is less a memory problem than a moral one, a parallel to disobedience. Remembering is vital. Because of the covenant Israel has with God, there are consequences if they fail to keep it. If they don't keep this covenant, they don't keep the land.

This is a situation unique to Israel. What I mean is, I am not personally guaranteed any land because of my obedience to God. I can't take these verses out of context and make them my own. But I can still learn something about God's character from them. What I learn is that Yahweh wants our allegiance. And this is the primary theme of Deuteronomy. He wants allegiance in action and in thought.

In fact, today and tomorrow, we will see three specific thoughts Moses warns them against thinking. The one we see today is in 7, 17-18, where he warns them not to be afraid of God's plan or think of it as impossible. Each time he warns them against a specific thought, he reminds them that the way to avoid letting that thought take over is to remember who God is, to recall what He has done for them.

Moses also anticipates a day when this new generation has children of their own who approach them with the eternal question, Why? Why do we have to do all these things? And he prepares them to answer this way, Because God rescued us out of slavery, and He cared for us and provided for us in miraculous ways, and that God who loves us is the one who commanded these things, and they're for our good always.

I love that part of 624, that we're called to fear the Lord our God for our good always. Obedience brings joy and gives life and is the right and good response to God for our good. Moses reiterates that they must completely drive out and destroy all the people of the land and not intermarry with them. And in 716, he also says they shouldn't even pity these people.

If some or all of the people they'll be dealing with do happen to be the crossbreed between humans and fallen angels, you can see all the more why this would be important. But even if they aren't, this is still God's way of accomplishing many aspects of his plan. First, he's punishing the wicked nations for their rebellion, and he's using Israel as the tool to accomplish that justice.

Second, he's ensuring that the line of the Messiah stays intact. And third, that the hearts of his people stay intact as well and aren't led astray to lesser gods. Moses reminds them to destroy all signs of idolatry in the land as well. And he promises that things will not go well if they don't. God even tells them that his plan is to drive out the enemy little by little and that there is purpose and intention in that.

When they grow impatient, he wants them to remember that he still has a process in mind. He's in this for the long haul. Moses reminds them,

God chose us before we were even a thing. He invented the Israelites. He didn't choose us because we were a massive, powerful nation and would make him look really awesome if he picked us for his team. There were literally zero of us, and all zero of us had extra zero to offer him, but he still set his love on us and grew us into the nation we are today. Then Moses says that if God's love is returned with hate, he will repay that person to their face.

I don't know about you, but that sentence terrifies me. Fortunately, Moses doesn't hover over it for too long. He moves on to all the abundant blessing God has in store for the Israelites. In 714, he says, What was your God shot today?

I have a special affection for 6, 10 through 11, where God references giving them cities they did not build, houses they did not fill, cisterns they did not dig, vineyards they did not plant. He's so incredibly generous, but he also wants them to remember who gave all this to them. He doesn't want their hearts to turn away to other gods when they get these blessings from him, when they're no longer living in tents in the desert with a fire cloud to guide them.

If you're a parent, imagine being really excited about the gift you're giving your kid for Christmas, then having him go lock himself in his room to play with it alone, fixing all his attention on it. Do you want him to enjoy the thing you generously gave him? Yes. But to the exclusion of a healthy relationship with you? No, of course not. You're after their joy and you're after their hearts.

And that's how God feels about us as well. He's after our hearts. He wants our joy. And He's where the joy is. If you've been watching The Chosen, you know Season 5 is coming to theaters on March 28th. And we've got a sneak peek for you where you can experience what it might have looked like as the religious leaders plotted to kill Jesus. We've linked to the full clip in our show notes.

Tragically, Jesus has now forced us into a situation where to protect our people, we must consider drastic measures. If the people are following a man falsely claiming he raised Lazarus from death, we make sure he's dead.

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