August 27, 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 explains the three main festivals that the people of Israel are to observe each year: the Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths. Each of these feasts serves as a reminder of the way that God had delivered His people from slavery in Egypt, and during these feasts the entire land was to rejoice before the Lord!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why was it so important that the people of Israel have these feasts to remind them of God\u2019s saving work in their lives? They needed these reminders because, as Moses has already asserted multiple times throughout the book of Deuteronomy, they were prone to forget God, to forget all He had done for them, and to go after other gods because of it. This is demonstrated in the ending of the chapter: Moses launches immediately from talking about these festivals of remembrance to warning them against injustice and, once more, against idolatry! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you think about it, the church calendar functions in a similar way: we have the season of Lent leading up to our celebration of Easter, and the season of Advent leading up to our celebration of Christmas. We observe these things as a means of being reminded of the way that God has moved and worked in history to accomplish our salvation through Jesus Christ! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because we are fallen, sinful creatures, we are all still so prone to forget God and all He has done. When we forget, we try to find our identity, our security, our joy, and our peace in lesser things that can never, ever give them to us! We need to be reminded daily of Who we serve and Whose we are, daily reminder of the truths of the gospel that we proclaim! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Choose to remember and to be reminded today! <\/p>\n\n\n\n