Posts from 2024 (Page 4)
What God Has Already Done
Perhaps the most under-talked about sin in all of scripture is the sin of forgetfulness, the sin of forgetting that life and livelihood are a gift, and forgetting the gift giver himself. The book of Deuteronomy is essentially Moses’ farewell address before Israel crosses over the Jordan River into the land that God has been promising them since their ancestor Abraham (nearly 500 years earlier). They’ve spent 40 years in the wilderness living on simple manna, but now they are…
Wisdom, Provision, Joy
Some of what we encounter in the book of Deuteronomy strikes us as strange and obscure (which will be true of anything written for people who lived thousands of years ago). But at the heart of Deuteronomy is a God who wants to make a covenant with his people. Deuteronomy is God’s way of saying, “Come, my beloved, let us enter into covenant relationship with each other and let us express the ways in which we will practice our faithfulness…
Practicing The Shema
After delivering the Shema, the greatest commandment (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), to the Israelites, Moses immediately follows it up by saying, “Keep these words in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your…
To See My Neighbor
When Jesus is asked the question, “Who is my neighbor?” he responds with his famous parable of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). The question is not asked in good faith. We’re told that the questioner, an expert in Jewish law, wants to test Jesus and to himself be declared right and justified in the process. So “who is my neighbor?” really means “who is not my neighbor?” The questioner wants to know whom he is allowed to exclude. He wants…
Love Overflowing with Knowledge
The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) calls us to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.” But when Jesus quotes the Shema (Matthew 22, Mark 12) he adds “with all your mind” into the mix. We might be prone to keep love and the mind, the emotional and the intellectual, affections and knowledge, in separate hemispheres of life, but Jesus is giving us a gift: these are one cohesive thing. The Bible is…
Everything God Has Made Us
When we think of the “soul,” we’re probably thinking of the non-physical aspect of our existence, the “real me” that lives on when the body dies. And while it’s true that our life in God is not bound only to our bodies, it’s also true that we get this concept of “soul” more from the Greek philosopher Plato than from Moses, Jesus, or anyone else in the Bible. Plato taught that our present experience of life, the world around us…
Reoriented
The Shema begins by calling us into silence, that we may hear, and then into our confession that God is one, that the LORD only is worthy of our devotion. So what comes next follows pretty logically. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart.” If God is one, then so shall our love be one, not splintered into many loves, but unified and moved solely toward our one God. The rest of Deuteronomy reiterates this commandment,…
Un-Splintered
The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5; “Shema” being the Hebrew word for “hear”) and Deuteronomy as a whole anticipate that once the Israelites move into the promised land, the temptation to idolatry will be a regular struggle. And so it is in The Shema, the daily prayer and greatest commandment according to Jesus, gets us in the habit of saying, “Hear, O Israel. The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” It’s a way of building up immunity to idolatry. If The…
His Answer Begins with “Listen”
Hear, O Israel. The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. This comes from Deuteronomy 6 and is both a commandment and prayer typically referred to as the “Shema” (Hebrew for “hear”/”listen”). In Matthew 22 and Mark 12, Jesus is asked point blank what the first and greatest commandment of Jewish law is, what the most important thing in the…
Already Praying
The life of prayer can be intimidating, but it’s not meant to be. “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus speaks these words to those he knows have been burdened by religion. Faith has been…