Deuteronomy 4-10
Key Scriptures
4:5-9 [Moses addressed the Israelites, saying] …“Take note that I have taught you the exact laws and regulations the Lord gave me in order for you to live by them once you enter the Promised Land. Follow them closely and the surrounding nations will recognize that you live by wisdom and understanding what is right and good. …Guard yourselves against forgetfulness and complacency so your affections and commitment to the Lord do not wane. Teach your descendants—your children, grandchildren, and their children—all that you’ve seen and learned of the Lord and his commands.”
4:16-19 “Be ever so careful that spiritual corruption does not set in and lead you to fashion an idol shaped like a man or woman, an animal or bird, or any creature that moves upon the ground or in the seas and streams. Likewise, you must be vigilant against gazing into the heavens at the sun, moon, and stars in their glorious array and fall prey to worshipping them; for they too are but part of the wondrous creation that reflects God to all humankind.”
4:35-40 “You have been shown many miracles in order to prove that the Lord alone is God and no other gods exist. …The Lord personally escorted you out of Egypt with his strong arm because he deeply loved your ancestors. And because of his commitment to them he will now use you to drive from the Promised Land nations much larger and more powerful than you, handing the land over to you as an inheritance. So confess with your lips and believe in your heart that the Lord your God dwells in both heaven and upon the earth as the only God in existence. Be certain to obey and live out the commands and regulations I lay before you today so when you enter the land of promise all will go well from now on for both you and your children.”
5:32-6:2 “You must be vigilant to behave just as the Lord commands, without veering off in any direction. Keep yourselves on the path the Lord has established for you to walk in and you will know longevity and prosperity in the land of your inheritance. You must realize that the commands of the Lord are for your own benefit, given so you, your children, and grandchildren will live in reverent awe of the Lord all the days of your lives—your long and healthy lives.
6:3-18 “Take heed, Israel, to vigilantly follow the commandments of the Lord so you will flourish in every way, increasing in numbers in a land overflowing with milk and honey. …Etch the commands I give you now upon heart and soul, and instill them in your children. Speak of them wherever you are—at home or out in public, both day and night. Bind them upon your wrists and foreheads. Write them upon your door frames and upon the gateposts to your homes. …Show deep respect to the Lord and devote all your service to him. Take no oath but those offered in his name. …Commit yourselves to always do what’s right—that which is good in the sight of the Lord your God.”
7:1-6 “The Lord your God will escort you into the Promised Land of your inheritance, scattering the seven powerful nations that now dwell there. …But you must commit yourselves to wiping out everyone the Lord gives into your hand; make of them a sacred offering. Don’t spare those you think will benefit you, attracted by them or their idols which will surely ensnare and entrap you. If any remain, you must not intermarry with them, exchanging sons and daughters; for in time you will surely take up with their idols, worshiping and bowing down to them. …No, you must dismantle their religious shrines, shatter their sacred phallus stones, level their Asherah poles, and burn to ashes their despicable idols. The reason: God has set you apart as his holy, chosen ones. Of all the earth’s inhabitants, you alone has he selected to be his treasured people.”
7:7-15 “But don’t get caught up thinking that God was drawn to you because of your size, for you were but a puny people. The sole reason he chose you is his love for you and the sacred oath he gave your forefathers to liberate you from bondage in Egypt. … So be mindful that the Lord your God is faithful and true, guided by love to keep his covenant and bless those who follow his commandments—those who love him. But for those who hate the Lord, their recompense will come in the form of their own destruction. Do not be reluctant to obey the commandments and regulations you receive from me today; for if you obediently follow them the Lord will faithfully fulfill his covenant agreement with your forefathers, showering his love upon you and blessing you mightily so that you flourish in every way—with families, herds, and crops in abundance. …And the Lord will remove all illness from among you.”
8:2-14 “Keep in mind that for forty years the Lord your God led you through the wilderness in order to discipline and test you. …He allowed you to go hungry and experience hardship in order to cultivate the right motivation to follow him. The manna he fed you…was for you to realize that bread alone isn’t enough to live on; but that men and women need every single word that God utters to find fulfillment. …The Lord taught you that, as a loving father disciplines his children, so does he discipline you out of love. …Therefore make it your highest priority to obey the Lord’s commandments, sticking to his paths out of reverence for him. Your God is leading you into a land of milk and honey…but once you’ve begun to enjoy its abundance, eating hearty meals every day, don’ t forget to thank him for his gifts. …And when you have eaten and feel contented, built good homes to relax in, watch your herds thrive and muliply, and see your wealth increase dramatically, take great care not to get arrogant and self-satisfied so that you feel no need for the Lord who freed you from Egypt to bless you.”
8:17-9:7 If you ever start to think, “By my own strength and cunning I managed to grow wealthy and succeed,” then stop and remember this: It is the Lord who provides you with the skill and talent to succeed, thereby upholding the covenant he made with your forefathers. …So listen carefully, Israel. …Keep in mind that it is the Lord your God who makes a path for you across the Jordan. …And it is he who will give you a swift and sure victory over those who dwell in Canaan, as he swore he would do. But when it actually happens, don’t for a minute think, “It’s because of Israel’s righteousness and faithfulness that God is rewarding us with the land of those he is dispossessing.” The truth is, it is his punishment for the iniquity of all those nations that he allows you to drive them out. It certainly is not due to your virtue or moral uprightness. …Never forget that you are not a righteous people before God, deserving the land. Far from it; you have proven yourselves to be an obstinate people…revolting against the Lord ever since he liberated you from Egypt.”
10:12-22 “To sum things up, what is it that the Lord wants from you, Israel? It is simply this: You are live in reverence before him, following the path he has laid out for you in heartfelt love and devotion to the Lord. Obey his commandments that I give you today so all may go well with you in the future. …For the Lord is your praise, your miracle worker…who has blessed and multiplied you to the point that you rival the number of stars in the sky.”
Basic Message
Moses addressed the Israelites, reemphasizing the importance of keeping all the commandments God had given them through him. Moses stressed their need to vigilantly guard their hearts against the temptations of idol worship, reminding them that there is no god except the Lord their God. Moses pointed out that God’s love of their forebearers led him to free them from Egypt and bring them to the Promised Land—a land they and their children would live long and well in if they would obediently and strictly live by the commands Moses had given. The Israelites were to make the commandments central to their thoughts and actions, memorizing and teaching them to their children and constantly reminding one another of the importance and relevance of the commandments to their daily lives.
After telling the people that God himself would dispossess the larger, stronger inhabitants across the Jordan, Moses then warned them that none of those inhabitants should be spared but offered up as a holy sacrifice to God. They were not to intermarry with any native inhabitants who might remain lest their sexually exploitative form of idol worship should be adopted by the Israelites, who God had chosen as his own special people. Moses then reminded the people that God’s loyal love for the Israelite nation was not due to anything attractive in them, but solely based on God’s faithfulness to the covenant he made with their ancestors—a covenant that would benefit them greatly if they would only keep their part by obeying the commandments.
Moses then told the nation of Israel that their years of wilderness wandering were a form of discipline from God, who loved and disciplined them as any father would his son. That discipline would help them to keep the commandments once they entered the land and were tempted to complacency by a future of abundance which God would give. Moses warned the people that when Canaan’s inhabitants were dispossessed and Israel experienced abundance, they must avoid thinking that it was due to their own virtue or strength. The dispossessing would be a judgment on the wickedness of those nations, since the Israelites had proven themselves to be little more than stubborn and rebellious. Therefore, Moses told the people to reform their callous hearts, to love and serve God and follow his commandments unreservedly so all would go well with them in the land.
Comments
* The human spirit is drawn to worship. There is a “God hole” that needs to be filled. But if the personal, intimate God of the Bible does not fill that void, humans turn to some form of idol worship to fill the hole. In Judaeo-Christian (biblical) terms, idol worship includes worshipping anything other than the person of God himself. And worship can be either formal (involving religious rituals) or informal (idolizing people and things). Most idolatrous worship is related in one way or another to the worship of nature in the form of sacred plants and animals, mountains and rock formations, or astrological bodies. Nature is either deified, or so-called “deities” are believed to inhabit natural objects. Even the human body and brain—material manifestations of nature—are worshipped through various expressions of art, science, and literature.
* The uniqueness of the Judaeo-Christian conception of God is that an all-powerful Creator/Sustainer God can also be loving, forgiving and personal. Human beings want to make it much more complicated. We fail to recognize that a relationship with the person of God is the depth and breadth of worship, and that he has already provided every means to make that relationship possible. We want to do something else to earn God’s favor and thus his approval and affections (and such actions are understandable among those without the revelation God has given in the Bible and person of Jesus). In the process, human beings have created spiritual and religious systems of worship that expose the worst of human nature. Sacred prostitution and child sacrifices are evidence of just how far off course we can go. Every warped human appetite will sooner or later be cloaked in religious garb. In a sense, religion is God’s worst enemy.
* Thus did Moses warn the Israelites to worship God alone and to meticulously avoid all the idolatrous forms of worship they would encounter in the Promised Land. The volatile mix of sex and religion practiced by the Canaanites would prove irresistible to the Israelites’ human nature—and deadly. But Moses made the appeal anyway, pleading the fact that their individual and national well-being depended on obedient worship of the God of their fathers. The whole wilderness experience and all the commandments were simply to bring the Israelites to a singleness of heart and the full recognition that God alone was their real prize. Learning to trust him, and not to live by and for bread alone (or manna, as it were), was the whole purpose of their desert sojourn. To “fear the Lord,” as Moses commanded, was in essence to trust and revere him. The blessings and abundance of the Promised Land were to be the consequence of having learned to love God and follow him wholeheartedly. Moses was reminding them that God, and not the Promised Land, was their primary possession and treasure. To reject him would entail losing everything else.
* The abundance of the Promised Land would provide another temptation that Moses warned the people about. He told them that when they became affluent and full, they must be careful not to forget God. Abundance brings complacency. As their bodies grew fat, so would their hearts—lest they diligently guarded against it. Idleness often follows affluence, as people tend toward laziness of body and soul when their needs are generously met. It is no accident that the word ‘idle’ is related to the word ‘idol’, for idleness so easily leads to idolatry when an unengaged, satiated state draws the heart toward satisfying inappropriate appetites. The Israelites would be drawn toward sacred prostitution when their hearts grew fat and lazy from the abundance of a land flowing with milk and honey.
* Things are no different today. The affluence those of us are fortunate enough to have been born into in the Western world (and some East Asian nations as well) has brought with it the tendency to engage in all manner of frivolous and immoral behavior. Many speak of the moral decline of the West. Is it not linked to the affluence of booming World War II economies coupled with human nature’s pull toward depravity? It is an old story. Roman affluence was attended by its own moral bankruptcy. While today, the oil-rich economies of many nations have given rise to the opulence and self-indulgence of leaders who ignore the basic needs and human rights of many of its citizens. A full stomach can easily lead to an empty heart, and one need not look far to find examples of it in the world today.
* It is, however, much easier on a personal level to link material excess and a tendency toward immorality. Many Hollywood celebrities offer prime examples of lifestyles given to morally-impoverished excesses—both sexually and materially. But every human being shares the same tendencies. And unless we guard against it, we can all be easily drawn toward similar behaviors (however inextravagant by comparison) if and when affluence comes our way. Given the opportunity of wealth, humans are prone to look for people, things, and experiences to put in the “God hole” they have left empty. Moses’ admonition to the Israelites applies to the whole human race. The only remedy for a wayward heart is to love and serve God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength. The promises of the Promised Land are only found in him.
Biblical Themes
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13
