Deuteronomy is Moses’ valedictory address or his retirement
speech. He sees that the single most
important thing to know as the people enter the land to possess it is to know
that God is one. It is a wonderful thing
to know there is only one God. It makes
our lives so much simpler to know that we don’t have competing claims and
interests on our lives. We don’t have to
sort out those things because He is One.
Because there is one God there is only one Law, one who must be not only
obeyed but loved, loved with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your might. Moses’ expectation is not a
people who have God’s Word as one thing in their lives, it is to be “the”
thing. “You shall teach them diligently
to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when
you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind
them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” They are to be a God-obsessed people and so
are we. Let Lent be a time of weeding
out things that distract you and allowing Him to be your one thing.
Jesus says, “whoever hates his life in this world will keep
it for eternal life.” In Luke 14.26 we
have, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot
be my disciple.” We were given this life
as a gift and we are to honor our father and mother, spouse and children, and
our brothers and sisters. In fact we are
commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves by Jesus and if anyone qualifies
as a neighbor it surely includes those kin.
We are not only commanded to love our neighbor we are commanded to love
them as we love ourselves. What then can
Jesus mean by telling us to hate our lives and our kin? Those sayings must be balanced by the command
to love God with all our heart, soul and might.
He must be so primary that all else feels like hate in comparison. In this way we stay on the right path, not
allowing anything or anyone to cause us to deviate from it.
What was the word Abel’s blood spoke? In Genesis 4 the Lord tells Cain, “What have
you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.” The Lord cared about the man who was
slain. Cain hadn’t committed the perfect
crime, he had been seen. While Abel’s
blood cried out for vengeance, the blood of Jesus cries out for mercy for
sinners, the very ones who put Him on the cross. Paul connects worship with what Jesus has
done as the appropriate response, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a
kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship,
with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” Let us not be guilty of coming to worship
unprepared for encounter, and unaware that while He is the lover of our souls,
He is also a jealous God, a consuming fire.
Let us ask Him to consume all those things in our lives that are of no
lasting value.
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