The Lord bless you and keep you
Make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you
The Lord turn His face toward you
And give you peace

Amen, amen, amen
Amen, amen, amen

(The Blessing, Songwriters: Chris Brown / Steven Furtick / Cody Carnes / Kari Brooke Jobe, Elevation Worship)

Who we trust most depends on who we adore with a desire to obey.  Who we adore, think about, and depend on most births a pure loving relationship because of the habitual character traits of trust, love and faithfulness. We are drawn to people who possess these traits.  We are assured of them as we witness these traits displayed in their behaviors.  Because of their love expressed for us we instinctively look for ways to make them smile to honor that person or persons in our lives.  Trust builds faith. Betrayal shatters relationships to the core. 

Ah, but people are not perfect—we are not perfect.  God knows that about us.  God also forgives. Forgiveness is a habitual characteristic of God. God demonstrates complete forgiveness and expects us to forgive, too.  We must develop this kind of unconditional forgiveness and obediently display it our behaviors because God has delivered forgiveness to us—mainly Jesus. God did through Jesus what we cannot do for ourselves—forgive and remove our sins forever.

In fact, there is nothing we do that will prevent God from forgiving a sincere, repentant person seeking His forgiveness. That’s who God is and it is one of traits we love about God! We love God and want to do what He says because He first loved and forgave us.  We forgive others as an act of obedience to God for our good and His glory!  It is our adoration, awe, and love that grows our relationship with God.

One of the most striking examples of this obedience principle is found in 1 Samuel, where the prophet Samuel declares to King Saul: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”  King Saul lost his way in the world.  His arrogance led him to think he was God.  He believed that he could do what he wanted and then sacrifice a few animals to settle things with God.  Yikes.  This way of life is not only dangerous it’s poor theology as it is not the intent of God. God knows our hearts and knows our motivations in obedience and in sacrifice.

Jesus, Son of God, came to earth and expands the obedience because we love principle:  “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” –Jesus, Matthew 5:23-24  Yes, indeed, to obey is better than sacrifice.  Love and forgive.  Trust and obey.  Jesus demonstrated the character of God in this way, “while we were yet sinners, He died for us.” 

Now, after forty years of wandering in the desert, Moses carried out God’s instructions to teach the people and prepare them to enter the promised land.  Their obedience to God will be for their good and declare the glory of God who leads them through all circumstances of life—a life with a future that God already knows and has prepared—if only they will love, trust, and obey—for there’s really no other way to be at peace!

May His favor be upon you
And a thousand generations
And your family and your children
And their children, and their children

May His presence go before you
And behind you, and beside you
All around you, and within you
He is with you, he is with you

Deuteronomy 4

Obedience Commanded

Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. ² Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.

³ You saw with your own eyes what the Lord did at Baal Peor. The Lord your God destroyed from among you everyone who followed the Baal of Peor, ⁴ but all of you who held fast to the Lord your God are still alive today.

⁵ See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. ⁶ Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” ⁷ What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? ⁸ And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

⁹ Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. ¹⁰ Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.” ¹¹ You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. ¹² Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. ¹³ He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. ¹⁴ And the Lord directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

Idolatry Forbidden

¹⁵ You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, ¹⁶ so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, ¹⁷ or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, ¹⁸ or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. ¹⁹ And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. ²⁰ But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are.

²¹ The Lord was angry with me because of you, and he solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance. ²² I will die in this land; I will not cross the Jordan; but you are about to cross over and take possession of that good land. ²³ Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden. ²⁴ For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

²⁵ After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, ²⁶ I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. ²⁷ The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. ²⁸ There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. ²⁹ But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. ³⁰ When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. ³¹ For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.

The Lord Is God

³² Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? ³³ Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? ³⁴ Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

³⁵ You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other. ³⁶ From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. ³⁷ Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, ³⁸ to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

³⁹ Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. ⁴⁰ Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.

Cities of Refuge

⁴¹ Then Moses set aside three cities east of the Jordan, ⁴² to which anyone who had killed a person could flee if they had unintentionally killed a neighbor without malice aforethought. They could flee into one of these cities and save their life. ⁴³ The cities were these: Bezer in the wilderness plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead, for the Gadites; and Golan in Bashan, for the Manassites.

Introduction to the Law

⁴⁴ This is the law Moses set before the Israelites. ⁴⁵ These are the stipulations, decrees and laws Moses gave them when they came out of Egypt ⁴⁶ and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon and was defeated by Moses and the Israelites as they came out of Egypt. ⁴⁷ They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan. ⁴⁸ This land extended from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge to Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon), ⁴⁹ and included all the Arabah east of the Jordan, as far as the Dead Sea, below the slopes of Pisgah.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

The Lord our God is still Present with us today.  There is no one like God!  

“Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.” (v.39)

God is still God.  God is faithful, compassionate, merciful, loving and trustworthy.  Because God so loved the world; Merciful God made a Way to help us find our way back to Him.  God’s Way was Jesus, His Son who came to rid the world the oppression of sin by His once and for all sacrifice.  He did want we could not do for ourselves no matter how many rams we might possess.  Obedience, loving God back with love and adoration in worship of Him alone is what God desires!

God demonstrated His love for us by sending a part of Himself, Jesus, to come down from heaven, human form to because the Son of Man, namely Mary and Joseph first, before growing in full stature as a man to move into the neighborhood of humanity.  The Son of God was commissioned to seek and to save the lost without value to the rest of the world at that time.  The Son of Man was loving, kind and compassionate and spoke words “not of this world;” words they “had not heard spoken to them before” Jesus.  In truth, Jesus’ words and deed fell over them like a warm blanket in the cold cruel oppressed world. 

Their world was ruled by evil Roman infantry who kept the peace as their leaders conspired to conquer everything at all costs.  Their world also consisted of legalistic, pompous religious law keepers who had no real relationship with God.  Sacrifice of the people mostly meant giving goods and money to the priests who added addendums to God’s Law to benefit themselves—just anther form of oppression.  Sacrifices became less that stellar ways to line the pockets of the priests.  Jesus changed everything as He taught the goodness of God with a more clear understanding of the intent of God—Love God.  Love Others.  All the commands of God hinge on these two.  Love leads us to forgive others as God has forgiven us.  Keep it simple yet profound when lived.

In the morning, in the evening
In your coming, and your going
In your weeping, and rejoicing
He is for you, he is for you
He is, He is

Amen, amen, amen

Paul clearly reminds us of the God who loves and forgives: “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! . . . Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Read all of Romans 7-8!) Rejoice in what God, through Jesus, has done for us!

God doesn’t want His children to obey Him just to get blessings or to avoid chastening, but because they love Him from the heart. Moses’ application of the law to the new generation magnifies God’s love for Israel and the importance of Israel loving the Lord. They were now to be a mature people who obeyed God from the heart. The Lord is a merciful God (v.31), but we shouldn’t tempt Him because He is also a jealous God (v. 24)—wanting our whole hearts, all our minds, and all our souls—all to Him we surrender.

Lord,

Thank you for teaching us what is best for us with loving patience, merciful kindness, with grace unending.  There is no one like you!  Thank you for your love and forgiveness.

In Jesus Name, Amen