Bible Reading Challenge Blog

We learn about the Levitical family which was set apart to do the work of the Lord.  They were not to be paid, they were not to till the land, they were not to do any work except the work of the Lord.  This is a bit of the model that we use in the Presbyterian Church, but we are open to the Anabaptist model of bi-vocational servants of the Lord.  They are not to receive any inheritance, any land, or anything else like the rest of the tribes of the Israel received, simply because they did not need it since they were full time at work for the Lord.

It progresses in this chapter from lifting up the Levites to underscoring that the people of Israel asked for a prophet to give them wisdom and insight into what God was doing.  Other people groups around them had sorcerers, diviners, people who could see the future through means which often became perverse.  Not the people of Israel.  They were to rely upon the mouthpieces of the Lord and know that the words which they spoke were given to them by the Lord.  Once again, as Presbyterians we do take this model.  There is a tremendous amount of pressure and responsibility when we take this approach.  

The responsibility is two-fold as we have the people who are listening are required to heed the words of the prophet.  If they do not, then they will be held responsible.  We don’t know what that means, we don’t know what kind of responsibility that would look like, we just know that they will be held responsible if they do not do what the prophet says.  Well, how do you know that what the prophet says is actually the words of God and not their own agenda.  Again, they will also be held responsible, but this time we see how they will be held responsible.  Look at vs.20.   Anyone who presumes and is considered the mouthpiece of the Lord and does not speak the words of the Lord will die.  They will die.  Now that is serious responsibility.

Once again we address the issue of worshiping other gods and this time  there is an added detail.  You need to have more than one witness who says that they saw a man or woman who worshiped other gods.  Once that is done then the one who accused must be the first to throw a stone.  Sound familiar?  Look at John 8:1-11 and you will see that Jesus asks the accuser, or someone who has not sinned, to throw the first stone.  That is a bit of a difference, isn’t it?  It prevented the woman from being stoned.  All of this is done so that you would purge evil from your midst.

There is also a provision in this chapter that if the decision is too difficult and cannot be made at the local level that it would then be referred to a higher court, again, sound familiar as far as what happens in our country, and that higher court would be in the place that the Lord God will choose.  This is the same place as the chapter before.  Interestingly enough you see that God gives permission to the people of Israel to set a king over themselves once they settle in the land.  

Look at the some of the prerequisites for this king.  I think of Solomon when I read in vs.17: “he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away.”  Maybe that was optional for Solomon.  But we do see that the heart of Solomon was eventually turned away and the kingdom was divided.  I also love the image of the servant king that we read in vs. 20 where the king should “neither exalting himself above other members of the community.”  That is the model that Jesus exemplified, this servant rule.

In the past the celebration of Passover was a family affair done in the home.  This is the way that it is celebrated today, in homes.  But here Deuteronomy institutionalizes it and says that the Passover festival must be celebrated in the central place of worship, or as vs. 2 states: the place that the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his name.  The details of which we are somewhat familiar, the unleavened bread which is the highlight of it.   But again, in vs.5-6 we read that Deuteronomy forbids the Passover celebration from being celebrated at home, in the towns where you reside, but rather it became a communal collective event as they were required to celebrate it at the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name (vs.6).

We also read the instituting of the pilgrimage three times a year to this same place, remember, the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.  To go along with the command to travel three times a year comes the reminder that judges are to be appointed who will render judgment for the people. There are a lot of commands that we are told to follow, but this one, “justice, and only justice, you shall pursue.”  This should stick and be significant.

So this is the description of the year of jubilee.  Every seventh year the debt that was owed within the Israelite community was forgiven.  This was true both financially as well as those who were slaves.  This is an exceptional model, one that we do not follow, but what a difference this would make.  Look at vs.11 and see if it reminds you of Matthew 26:11 or Mark 14:7 where Jesus says that you will have the poor with you always, so you must always make them a priority.  This is emphasized in Deuteronomy 15:11 where we read  that since we will always have the poor with us then we ought to open our hand to the poor and the needy neighbor in the land.  

It says not just in the land, but in your land.  We have the beginning of a fledgling social ministry as we have a food bank and opportunities for people to come in and see if their needs can be met.  But we can do so much more to open our hand for the poor.  

There are some disturbing verses about slaves and slavery which I pray we are able to relegate to that which is from well before the dawn of the age where we understood that all people were made from the same mud.  But did you notice that it speaks also very specifically to those who had slaves who were Israelites.  So we know that back then one could become a slave not because they were exported from another country and were of a different race or ethnicity, but rather from the same bloodline.  

I’m not sure this makes it better, but slavery back in Moses’ day was built around those who were indebted to society for a whole variety of reasons.  Remember a diverse society is a fairly new construct and one that is uniquely American.  Much of our diversity has come from forced migration, but much of it has also come because people have sought our opportunities.  The African American experience is one that has to be revisited because of the forced, violent, barbaric migration that we masterminded.  It will never go away the pain that was caused by this tragedy in history.

We normally skip right to the verses that deal with tithing in this chapter.  If you want to skip right there they begin in vs.22ff.  But look at the verses before this.  We see a directive on what we can eat and what we cannot eat.  We read here for the first time that we are not to eat pork simply because it does not chew its cud.  The same it true for the camel, do not eat it, it does chew its cud but it does not have forked hoof.  If you have ever seen a camel I’m not sure you would want to eat it anyway.

But all of these directives are for the purpose of reminding us that God has set us apart to be a special people, people who are not like everyone else and set apart to do the will of God.  I’m grateful that we have Acts 10:9-16 where God tells Peter, tells us as well, that whatever God has made is clean.  Back then it wasn’t easy to be selective with your diet.  But there must have been also some “scientific” understanding that some of these animals were unclean simply because if you ate them you could get sick, really sick.  We don’t read that here, here we read don’t eat them because you are set apart.

Now on to tithing.  The reason for tithing is given here in vs.23, we tithe so that we may learn to fear the Lord your God always.  Part and parcel of this fear is knowing that all that we have is the Lord’s.  Look at Psalm 24:1 and we read: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”  We can claim no ownership in this world.  As the youngest of 4 boys I’m very comfortable with that.  I always had hand me downs, I always knew that what I had was a gift from someone else.  But can we take that to the next level as adults.  That what we have, our jobs, our homes, our relationships, our families, all that we have is God’s and a blessing and a gift from God.  Tithing reminds us of that.

God is pretty serious about that whole first and second commandment thing.  There is only one God, first commandment, no idols, second commandment.  In fact, in this chapter he says if anyone among you, whether they be prophets, or neighbors, or sons or daughters, or spouse, or father or mother, or anyone at all who might be telling people that there is a god other than the Almighty God, there is only one solution.  Put them to death.  We are even given a sequence of events on how to put them to death.  You own hand shall kill them first, and then the town should stone them.

The priority that God places on us worshiping Him and Him alone cannot be overstated.  Our God is an awesome God, He reigns and doesn’t take prisoners.  I am also very, very grateful for our God as seen in Jesus Christ who ministers to the Samaritan woman (who worshiped other gods by the way) and treated her with tenderness and respect and as a result she and the entire village came to a saving knowledge of Jesus as the Messiah.   You can find that story in John 4.  

I prefer that approach to those who do not believe in God.  Not a scorched earth approach, but rather a relational approach where you give them a chance to see the love of God.

This entire chapter is devoted to the right sacrifice that the Lord requires.  We have to transition to a couple other places in Scripture where we read that the most important offerings, the most important sacrifices are not those that are given by our hands.  Look at: Micah 6:1-8, Hosea 6:6 as well.  God wants our devotion to justice and equity more than just some left-over time and false intentions. 

We read the abomination that it was to the Israelites to sacrifice their children like so many of their neighbors did.  This is not just in Hollywood.  There was a time when the sacrifice of people, even children, was common place and was thought to appease the gods.  Israel never allowed that and always saw it as an abomination.

As a result of these abhorrent things that took  place in these sacrificial spaces Moses commands that they all be torn down.  All the places where the gods were worshiped with sacrifices were to be torn down.  You can see from vs.2 and following the command to tear down all of the idols.  The command is that you will not worship the Lord your God in the way that other people do.  Smash all of their altars so that you have no temptation to follow along with what the people around you are doing.

The cliche’ question would be what altars do we have which need to be torn down?  But maybe we need to eschew the traditional and move toward the question of what distinguishes us from those around us?  Maybe nothing…, that would be a sad testament to our faith and our following our Savior.  If nothing is different about us then how are we not at  the foot of the idols which culture has created and those idols dictate our purpose and the direction that we move. That is a scary, but very real possibility.

The promises of the Lord are laid out before the people of Israel in a very obvious, almost self-incriminating fashion.  Moses reminds the people of Israel of all that God has done for them in liberating them from Egypt including, but not limited to, what God did on the Red Sea as he vanquished the armies of Pharaoh by closing the waters over them and destroying them.  This then allowed them to enter into the land which was flowing with milk and honey.  

Moses encourages, no he actually beseeches, them to obey all of the commandments which the Lord has laid before them.  Look at vs. 13 and you will find that he says if you would only obey the Lord then, and only then, he will bless you with rain, the kind of rain that allows crops to grow.  Yes, this is a conditional arrangement where God promises something if, and only if, we respond to that which He has provided by following His commandments.  Remember, we have said all along that God pursues us with an unconditional covenant.   God has already done the work whether we choose to receive it or not.  In Jesus Christ we have a new covenant which is very different from the covenant that we have laid before us here.

Also, a very well known portion of Scripture begins at vs.18 where you find the commandment to teach these laws to your children so that they will also be aware of them and they not be foreign to you nor to your children.  Another promise is not only that rain would come but that the enemies of the people of Israel would be scattered from them and they would be able to conquer all those regions that the Lord has put before them.  The assumption, however, is that if you don’t follow the commandments then the Lord will not give the people over to you.

We find Moses and the 10 Commandments part 2 and God’s command  to make an ark in order to store them.  That is all done and God relents and does not destroy the Israelites.  Then we have the story of the death of Aaron and the special place that the Levites hold in the history of the people of God as those who were tasked with carrying the 10 Commandments.  It is interesting that in the Hebrew instead of commandments the word is actually word.  So it would be the 10 words which the Lord gave to Moses, and here we see that the Lord is actually the one who writes them on the tablets.

If you look at vs.12 you hear a pretty familiar verse which states: What does the Lord require of you?  We see that same questions posed in Micah 6:8 which is called the Micah mandate, but the answer given there is a bit different from the one given here, but not entirely.  Micah tells us what the Lord requires us to: do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.  In Deuteronomy we hear: fear the Lord your God, walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God.

I also love the part that reminds us in vs.19 that we are to “love the stranger”.   What a message for us today.  Love the stranger, do justice, love kindness, walk humbly, fear the Lord.  If we could only do that…

A verse in this chapter that we would do well to remember is verse 24 where we read the Lord saying to the people: “You have been rebellious against the Lord as long as he has known you.”  This chapter is an accounting of the times that the people of Israel had been rebellious against the Lord.  We find the locations listed in this chapter: Horeb where Moses was presented with the stone tablets but told to hurry off the mountain because the people were making a golden calf, Taberah, Massah, Kibroth-hattaavah, and finally Kadesh barnea where the people were told to take the land and they balked.

In this chapter we read about the locations where the people of Israel had hesitated because they did not see how they could do that which was impossible, even if the Lord encouraged them and told them to do it.

There is also the constant reminder, which really sets everything up here, that God was giving the people of Israel the promised land not because they were in any way faithful or righteous.  No, in fact, it seems like all of this was happening in spite of the unfaithfulness of the people of God simply to underscore the faithfulness of the Lord.  We also see Moses as lifting himself up as the Savior of the people, which I guess in some ways he was.   But also in some ways he is doing a bit what the Lord told them not to do, which was take any credit at all from what has happened.  All of this is the doing of the Lord, not of us.