August 26, 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
Moses continues explaining the Covenant Law to the people of Israel. In this chapter, Moses continues to lay out practices of worship, generosity, and social equity that would have very much distinguished them among the neighboring nations. Their way of life was to put the glory and holiness of the God they served on display, and that Law was the means of doing that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moses specifically speaks to the matter of the Sabbath year and the generosity which was to characterize the people of God. In reverence and worship towards God, without a grudging heart nor a fearful one, everyone in Israel who had lent to another was to release them from that debt in the Sabbath year. It didn\u2019t matter if the person had paid or not, whether they had the debt for six of the seven years or only a couple of weeks; all debts were to be forgiven in the seventh year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lord also commanded His people to give generously to all their Israelite brothers or sisters who became poor in the land. They were not to harden their hearts in greed nor even consider how close the Sabbath year was (and therefore how likely they were to actually get repaid for the loan); they were to live with an open hand and a soft heart towards those who were in need around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the people of Israel obeyed these commands, the Lord promised to bless them. The very same expectations, along with the very same promises, exist for God\u2019s people today; in light of the incredible generosity of God towards us in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 8:9), we are to be people characterized by generosity and open-handedness towards those in need, especially those within the church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Acts chapters 2 and 4 we see descriptions of the radical generosity that the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit and the gospel produced in the lives of the early believers in Jerusalem. They gave as there was need among them<\/strong>, so that \u201cThere was not a needy person among them\u201d (Acts 4:34). What would it look like for us to really live this way, in this radical kind of generosity that the Lord calls us to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like it was for the early church, this kind of genuine love demonstrated through generosity is one of the most powerful witnesses to the world of the reality of God\u2019s presence in and among us as His people. In the end, the call of God towards this sort of generosity is a call to trust Him and His promises. If we truly believe that He is who He says He is, and we truly trust that He will follow through on His promises to bless us when we live this way, then that frees us to walk in radical open-handedness towards those in need!<\/p>\n\n\n\n