Devotionary

In Deuteronomy 15:19-23, Moses is going to bring up the topic of the firstborn again. He first addressed it in chapter 12 and then again in chapter 14. But this time he is going to discuss the sacrifice of the firstborn of the flock and the herd. The doctrine of the firstborn was to have strong significance for the people of Israel, providing a link all the way back to the days before the exodus from Egypt. As a result of God sparing the firstborn son of every Hebrew family, as well as the firstborn of their sheep and bulls, the Israelites were to dedicate these animals as offerings to God. They belonged to Him. And the presence of the Levites among the other tribes was to act as a constant reminder that they stood as substitutes for every firstborn male among the Israelites. The tribe of Levi had been dedicated to God for His service. And the firstborn of the flocks and herds also belonged to God – as tokens of thanks and expressions of worship.

Poverty and need are nothing new. They have been a part of the human condition ever since the fall. In fact, they’re both a byproduct of sin’s entrance into the world. With sin came death. And not just the physical kind. Poverty is a form of economic death that leaves an individual, a family, or even a community experiencing the slow and debilitating loss of life. When the resources necessary for experiencing fullness of life are unavailable, it results in a host of people who become like the walking dead, robbed of their dignity and devoid of any real hope of change. In Deuteronomy 15:12-18, Moses addresses the issue of poverty among the people of Israel and gives them God’s divine plan for alleviating it. In a nation that was guaranteed the blessings of God, there should be no one who suffered want. God’s blessings were meant to be shared.  

God is a gracious God, and no one should have known that better than the people of Israel. He had repeatedly extended to them His grace and mercy and, in most cases, in spite of them, not because of them. He had chosen them as His own, not because they deserved it, but because He wanted to express His love for them. And God expected His chosen people to treat others with the same graciousness and goodness that they had received from Him. In Deuteronomy 15:1-11, Moses encourages the people of Israel to care for the poor and needy among them. He had even come up with a plan for forgiving debt and allowing people a chance to start their lives anew, with no threat of prosecution or slavery should they fail to pay all they owed. These kinds of initiatives, ordained by God, were meant to set the people of Israel apart from all the other nations and to mirror the loving, gracious, and forgiving nature of their God.

In Deuteronomy 14:22-29 Moses is going to remind the people of God of their obligation to keep the designated feast days that God had established for them. These were non-negotiable events in which every Israelite was to participate. But the feasts and the sacrifices that accompanied them were about more than law-keeping. They were designed to be communal festivals of celebration and thanksgiving to God. Three times a year, the nation of Israel was to gather at the site of the tabernacle and share the joy of being God’s chosen people. They had ample reason to rejoice and God wanted them to do it together – as a family. And He made sure that everyone was to be included, from the widow and orphan to the foreigner in their midst. They were to share their food and their common sense of gratitude to God for all that He had done for them.  

The Israelites were meant to stand out from the crowd. They were to be distinct and different, from their actions and attitudes to the way they dressed and the food they ate. God had called them to be His prized possession, having set them apart as uniquely His and having provided them with His law which would dictate every aspect of their behavior. He had even come up with regulations regarding their food consumption. They were not free to eat whatever they wanted to eat. Rather than allowing themselves to be driven by their appetites, they were to live in submission to the will of God. God knew what was best and by obeying His commands, they would express their trust in Him. While the rest of the world did whatever they deemed best, the people of God were to do what God had determined to be holy. And in Deuteronomy 14:1-21, Moses makes that point perfectly clear.

As followers of God, we are under constant attack from the enemy as he attempts to deceive us and draw us away from our devotion to God. He will never be content with our faithfulness to God and will do everything in his power to cause us to defect. His attacks are relentless and merciless. His temptations are unending and his techniques are deceptive and deadly. And in Deuteronomy 13:1-18, Moses warns the people of Israel that the enemy will prove highly resourceful, using the least likely sources to convince them to abandon God. The call to commit idolatry doesn’t necessarily come from expected sources. Moses lists the prophet, a close friend or family member, and the society as a whole as three possible threats to their faithfulness to God. If the people didn’t remain alert to the threat, they would find themselves drawn in and dragged down the path of apostasy.

God had intended for Israel to stand out as a nation. He had chosen them and set them apart as His own prized possession. Now, as they prepared to enter the land God had promised to give them, Moses warned them to maintain their set-apart status. They were not to blend in or cozy up to the nations occupying the land. There was no place for compromise or thoughts of coexistence with the Canaanites. In fact, God had made it clear that the Israelites were to eliminate every last Canaanite and to purge the land of anything and everything associated with them, including the altars and high places they had constructed to their false gods. In Deuteronomy 12:29-32, Moses reminds the people that emulating the Canaanites was a bad idea. Worshiping their gods was even worse. And any thought of adapting their forms of worship were to be avoided at all costs. In this case, imitation would NOT be the sincerest form of flattery.

The sacrificial system, instituted by God, required the shedding of animal blood in order to atone for the sins committed by men. This seemingly barbaric and gruesome ordinance was required by God and practiced by the people of God so that they might remain in His good graces – in spite of their ongoing struggle with disobedience and unfaithfulness. During their years in the wilderness, the people were required to slaughter all their animals at the tabernacle. It was there and there only that blood could be shed. But, now that they were preparing to enter the land and the permanent home of the tabernacle would prove to be too far away for some of the tribes, God was providing a special dispensation. Deuteronomy 12:15-28 reveals that God would allow the people to slaughter animals within their own territories, but the divine ban on the consumption of blood held fast because the life is in the blood.  

As Christians, we tend to make a habit out of doing things our own way. Even when it comes to worship, we have strong opinions about what kind of worship we find most enjoyable and acceptable. But the problem is that worship was never intended to have man as its focus. We are the worshipers, not the ones being worshiped. So, our worship is meant to be God-directed, not man-centered. And in Deuteronomy 12:1-14, Moses warns the people of Israel that their worship of God was going to be according to God’s standards, not their own. Once they arrived in the land of Canaan, there was going to be one divinely approved place of worship. No more setting up shrines and altars wherever they felt like it. And they were to refrain from adapting and adopting the pagan shrines, converting them for the worship of Yahweh. That was going to be unacceptable. Doing what was right in their own eyes was not going to be an option. Their worship of God would have to be on His terms, or not at all.

Wholehearted obedience to God flows from a heart of love for God. Without love, obedience becomes nothing more than legalism, a heartless attempt to do what God requires – out of fear rather than faith. Instead of viewing God as a loving Father who has our best interest in mind, we begin to view Him as a taskmaster who demands that we earn His favor through self-empowered adherence to His commands. But heartless obedience is doomed to failure. And that is what Moses attempts to warn the Israelites about in Deuteronomy 11:13-25. God wanted to bless them. But it was going to require that they obey Him. Yet God was not interested in an obedience motivated by fear and driven by a desire to earn good things from God while avoiding His bad side. No, God wanted the Israelites to obey Him because they loved Him. Their adherence to His commands was to be driven by their appreciation for His goodness and grace.     

God demands obedience from His people. But that expectation is not based on some need on His part to feel important. He doesn’t require affirmation and He is in no need of an ego boost. God’s demand that His people obey Him is based on His desire to bless them. In Deuteronomy 11:1-12, Moses will remind the people of Israel of God’s faithfulness. While the younger generation had an excuse, because they were not yet alive when God delivered Israel from captivity in Egypt, their parents had every reason to trust and obey God. He had more than proven His trustworthiness and His capacity to bless those who obeyed Him. But the next generation was going to have to learn to trust God on their own. If they wanted to enjoy all that the land of promise offered, they would have to walk in obedience to God’s commands. Because obedience brings blessings.   

We serve a great God. At least, that’s what we say. But far too often, our perception of God seems to be a lot less flattering. We tend to see Him as distant and disinterested in our lives. Worse yet, there are times we view God as simply good, but not great. We look at our circumstances and deem His power to be limited. Either that, or His love for us is insufficient. And when we have a less-than-flattering view of God, it changes the way we interact with Him. Our obedience becomes spotty. Our faithfulness can grow weak and wavering. And the same thing was true of the Israelites in Moses’ day. That’s why, in Deuteronomy 10:12-22, we have Moses reminding the Israelites of God’s greatness and the need for them to fear, love, and serve Him. Their lives were to reflect His nature, emulating His mercy, love, and justice. As His children, they were to exhibit His character in every area of their lives.

If you’ve ever lost your job, you know how demoralizing that can be. Whether you were fired or laid off, the outcome is the same. You feel a sense of loss coupled with humiliation. Regardless of the circumstances, you find yourself entertaining thoughts of failure. But the best response at a time like that is action, not lethargy. Mourning over your loss, while natural, cannot become your long-term strategy. Our response will play a huge part in our ability to rebound and restart our life. In Deuteronomy 10:1-11, we have Moses retelling the story of Israel’s failure to keep God’s commands. While he had been on the mountaintop receiving the Ten Commandments from God, the people had decided to replace God with an idol. And their actions would bring judgment from God. Not only that, they would lose their job as God’s royal priesthood. Their sin would result in the forfeiture of their priestly role and their failure to enter the land of promise.  

Israel was totally unworthy of God’s goodness and grace. They were undeserving of all that He had done for them and had proven themselves incapable of living in faithfulness to Him. Yet, God had continued to bless them – in spite of them. Their entire history up until this point had been marked by rebellion and not righteousness. Even as they stood on the border of the land of Canaan, they had a long track-record of disobedience to God. Yet, in Deuteronomy 9:13-29, we will see Moses reminding them that God remained faithful to them because He was the covenant-keeping God. He had plans for them and those plans included their continued existence as a nation. God had promised that He would bless them and that they would be a blessing to the nations of the earth. It would be God’s plan to bring redemption to the world through a rebellious and unrighteous people. Because He is a faithful God.

“I just want what I deserve.” How many times have you heard that or even said it yourself? And yet, we all know that if we got what we deserved, we’d probably be highly disappointed. But how easy it is to assume that we are better than we really are. Our false perception of our own self-righteousness can be highly deceptive. And Moses knew that the people of Israel suffered from an inflated sense of self-worth as well. And it was only going to get worse after they entered the promised land and began enjoying all the blessings God had in store for them. In Deuteronomy 9:1-12, Moses continues his address to the people of Israel, reminding them that all God was about to do was going to be in spite of them, not because of them. He was not rewarding them for their good behavior. His was extending His undeserved grace and mercy to a people who had proven their penchant for stubbornness and rebellion. They were unrighteousness and undeserving, but God would prove faithful and true to His promises.

We’ve already covered the topic of forgetfulness, but it seems that Moses is not quite done with this point. In Deuteronomy 8:11-20, he is going to raise the issue of forgetfulness one more time, reminding the people of Israel that they needed to avoid it like the plague. God had done amazing things on their behalf and had even more He was going to accomplish as they prepared to cross the River Jordan and enter the land of promise. But Moses knew they ran the risk of suffering from short-term memory. Once they got into the land and began to enjoy all the fruitfulness and blessings it provided, they would begin to think that they had somehow earned or deserved their newfound prosperity. That is why Moses warned them to remember God. If not, forgetfulness of God’s role in their conquest of the land would lead to self-exaltation and self-reliance, robbing God of glory and rewarding themselves with credit they did not deserve.

How easy it is to forget God. Even those of us who claim to believe in Him and have had our relationship restored to Him through faith in Jesus Christ, can find ourselves forgetting all He has done for us. We grow indifferent and immune to His goodness and grace. We can even find ourselves complaining about what we believe to be our unfair lot in life. And the Israelites were no different. Even though they had been rescued out of slavery in Egypt and delivered to the borders of the land of promise, they were guilty of forgetting all that God had done for them. Which is why, in Deuteronomy 8:1-10, we have Moses reminding them of God’s past acts of goodness, and encouraging them to believe that He will continue to provide for them in the days ahead. The land of promise was rich and abundant, but the blessings it provided would be from God. A point Moses did not want the Israelites to miss.

Moses out of a burning bush. He had led the Israelites through the wilderness by making Himself visible as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. When God had descended upon Mount Sinai to give the law to Moses, He had made His presence known both visibly and audibly through the means of thunder, lightning, fire, and smoke. And the people had been so impressed by this tangible show of force that they had refused to approach the mountain out of fear. Now, in Deuteronomy 7:17-26, Moses tries to encourage a new generation of Israelites to remember the Lord their God. As they prepared to enter the promised land, it was going to be essential that they not forget God. He may be invisible, but He was going ahead of them and would turn back their enemies before them. As long as they remained faithful to Him.

God had big things in store for Israel. And all that He had promised to do for them was backed by His covenant commitment. He had told them what He would do and He could be trusted to keep His word. But the problem was that the covenant He had made with Israel had been a bilateral one. That means both sides had to keep their part of the commitment. Any hope they had of enjoying all the blessings God had promised was directly tied to their willingness to remain faithful to Him and fully obedient to all the requirements of the law. As a nation, they had given their word to do everything the Lord had commanded. But Moses knew they were a fickle people who had a track record of unfaithfulness. So, in Deuteronomy 7:7-16, he provides them with a much-needed reminder that their status as God’s chosen people was based on grace, not their own goodness. But if they wanted to continue to enjoy His presence and provision, they would have to be faithful.

Being set apart as God’s chosen people was not enough. Just because God had designated the Israelites as His prized possession did not mean that they were inherently different or distinct from their pagan neighbors. In fact, they were very much like the other nations around them. The only thing that set them apart was their relationship with God and their possession of His law to guide their daily lives. It was the law that was to separate them from every other people group on earth. But it could do so only if they chose to obey it. And Moses knew that was going to prove a problem for the Israelites. So, in Deuteronomy 7:1-6, we have recorded his words reminding them of their status as a holy nation, and their need to separate themselves from the rest of the inhabitants of the land.