August 28, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The message of Deuteronomy is one that the church desperately needs to hear today. These final words of Moses given to the children of Israel as they prepared to enter into the Promised Land serve as a warning, an encouragement, and a charge. Through them, God exposes the idolatry of our hearts and calls us to give all of our love, worship, and devotion to Him alone in every area of our lives! Moses warns the people that when they enter the land there will be things that compete with God for their attention, their affections and their worship. We, too, have hundreds of things that compete for our hearts each and every day. In this book, God teaches us how to properly respond to the amazing grace He has given us by giving Him our undivided allegiance, our whole hearts and our whole lives. Over the next 34 days, let\u2019s seek this ancient way together as a church!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this chapter Moses gives laws concerning proper sacrifices, dealing with idolaters in the land, solving legal cases that are too difficult for the local authorities to handle, and how the king who the Lord chooses for Israel should conduct himself. In all of these things it is stressed once more that God\u2019s people are to be holy; they are to live and worship and rule in a way that is so different from the nations around them, in a way that reflects the character and holiness of their God!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In verse 1 Moses tells the people that, when they offer sacrifice to the Lord, they must not offer an animal that has any defect or blemish, because to do so is an abomination to the Lord. The animals they offered were to be spotless, without fault of any kind. They were to do this out of reverence and worship towards God; because He is holy and incomparably great, He deserves the best of what we could offer Him, and offering Him anything less than that demonstrates a blatant disregard for His glory!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was true for Israel then is true for us now: when we offer our worship to the Lord, we should be giving Him the absolute best that we have! In our busy schedules today, many of us struggle to make having time with God a priority, and even when we do it we\u2019re so tired or so focused on getting to the next thing that we are hardly being still in His Holy presence. Why are we so often content, even happy with ourselves, when we give God merely the scraps of our time and attention?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lord is clear in this passage: He wants our all, our everything, the very best that we have to offer to Him. He has not withheld anything from us, not even His own Son; will you then withhold anything from Him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n