Today’s passage: Deuteronomy 4
Helpful thoughts:
- As Moses begins to preach the law, he gives Israel reasons to follow them (and the Lord).
- The Lord is giving them the land.
- Those in Israel’s past who turned to idols perished. Those who obeyed lived.
- The laws were given by God Himself (which is why no man should ever add to or take away from them!).
- The law is excellent, worthy of obedience (and this obedience would set Israel apart from the rest of the world as the greatest and most wise nation).
- They were in covenant with the Lord! They had promised to obey and God had promised to be their God.
- Idolatry has no place. “The Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.”
- Moses then restated the three cities of refuge east of the Jordan (Cities where those who committed manslaughter could go to receive a trial and protection against vengeance from close family of the deceased). There would later be three additional cities west of the Jordan.
Questions to consider:
- When we come to understand who God is, how does idolatry become such a preposterous idea? What is everything and anything else we might try to worship?
- Why is God’s jealousy for His people a righteous jealousy? What right does God have to His people in our relationship? How might we even share in God’s jealousy and show that appropriately in our efforts to turn confessing Christians back to Him in repentance?
- How has God purchased us as His own people (1 Peter 1:18-19)? As blood-bought members of the New Covenant, how should we then live?