(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
Deuteronomy 10:12–22, “And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good? Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD’S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked. For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen. Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.”
The Lord had one major requirement from Israel: they were to fear the Lord God, walk in His ways and love Him. This would lead to a desire to serve Him wholeheartedly. What does it mean to fear the Lord? After the Lord called Abraham, He promised Abraham that He would make Abraham’s family into a great nation (Gen 12:1–2, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:”) However Abraham was afraid that this wouldn’t happen but the Lord told him, “Fear not!” (Gen 15:1, “After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.”) The Lord assured Abraham that he could be confident that the Lord would keep all His promises. When the Lord told Israel to fear the Lord it was in the context of His faithfulness. Israel were not to be afraid that the Lord would fail them, they were to respect the Lord’s holiness and accept that they needed to maintain faith with this holiness. For a person who believes the Lord, fearing the Lord means rejoicing in the Lord’s faithfulness and respecting His holiness. If we do both of these things then it is an easy thing to obey the Lord, not to impress Him but because we are impressed by His holiness. Everything in the entire creation belongs to the Lord and the Lord loves His people. This means that the Lord’s people are required to live up to His high standards and show the rest of the world just how great the Lord really is. For Israel, all they had to do was look back on their history. There were only seventy people who came to Egypt (compare Gen 46:27, “And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten.”) but there were about two million who left Egypt. This was because the Lord loved them.
No comments:
Post a Comment