PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Deuteronomy 5-6
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks with them.” (Deuteronomy 5:24)
For people in ancient times, the gods were not friendly but fierce powers to be appeased.
They saw the gods as powerful – like fire – in a negative way.
The God of Moses is powerful too and speaks out of fire (5:25-26), out of burning love!
This God desires loving fear, not cowering fear – a loving bond with them and their children.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (6:5)
Moses’s warnings about forgetting and disobeying God are motivated by love, not fear.
God – the only God there is – longs to bless them and keep them from cowering fear.
God wants to live among them, and to talk with them in a positive way, as a friend.
“The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11)
Jesus comes to us as God with us, the friendly face of God calling us home.
His warnings are not to keep his disciples cowering, afraid of God’s burning anger.
He wants us to know that God loves us, and for us to being loving to God others!
This is what the Law is all about – it is the Law of God, the Law of Love (Matthew 22:34-40).
Is God for you a burning fire to fear or a loving friend that wants a relationship with you?
PRAYER
Lord, thank you for revealing God’s friendly face and voice, for allowing me to live without fear, without condemnation. Why would anyone want to serve any other kind of god?
“And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” This sounds so much like Islam. For both the Israelites and Islamic followers, following the law and the practice of circumcision – are both required for believers to be ‘right’ with God or Allah. Is it the same for me? Yes about the law – the 10 commandments – the standard is there but I know that I am not able to keep them perfectly – I have broken these laws. But I know Jesus has kept them perfectly – and He is willing to stand in my place – He is my righteousness. Through faith in Him I am saved. So I try to live up to the law and it is Jesus’ gift of the HS that helps me. I am baptized (not circumcised) in Jesus. I am marked as a child of God through Him!
Once again it is good to read the law of God. It is a law that I need to be reminded of and to live according to that law. It states – do this and live. As God lead His people then He continues to lead His people today. I need to serve Him in all I do and say this day and always – doing His will – serving Him always. Not my will but Your will be done in my life – in my living for Jesus Who has shown the Way and I need to walk in it.
1 Not what these hands have done
can save this guilty soul;
not what this toiling flesh has borne
can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do
can give me peace with God;
not all my prayers and sighs and tears
can bear my awful load.
2 Thy work alone, O Christ,
can ease this weight of sin;
Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God,
can give me peace within.
Thy love to me, O God, not mine,
O Lord, to Thee,
can rid me of the dark unrest,
and set my spirit free.
3 Thy grace alone, O God,
to me can pardon speak;
Thy pow’r alone, O Son of God,
can this sore bondage break.
I bless the Christ of God;
I rest on love divine;
and with unfalt’ring lip and heart,
I call this Savior mine.