GOD-TALK AND GOD-ACTS
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Opening Prayer
Father, please speak to me through your Word today. Let me hear your voice as I reflect on what it says.
Read DEUTERONOMY 24:10–25:19
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
10 When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into their house to get what is offered to you as a pledge. 11 Stay outside and let the neighbor to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. 12 If the neighbor is poor, do not go to sleep with their pledge in your possession. 13 Return their cloak by sunset so that your neighbor may sleep in it. Then they will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the Lord your God.
14 Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. 15 Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
16 Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin.
17 Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. 18 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.
19 When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. 20 When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. 21 When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. 22 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.
25 When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. 2 If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, 3 but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes.
4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
5 If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. 6 The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
7 However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” 9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” 10 That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.
11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
13 Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. 14 Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. 15 You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. 16 For the Lord your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.
17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. 19 When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
Are there any disconnects between your faith and your faithfulness?
The Hebrew word for faith, emunah, also means ‘faithfulness.’ For the Israelites, trust in God involved correct belief about God, which issued in right living for him. Active obedience to his commands, of which, once again, we find many in today’s passage, was the supreme test of faith. It mattered little how well you knew God’s commands if you totally failed to live by them. Deuteronomy 12:28 gives a beautiful summary of what faith/faithfulness entailed for the Hebrews and how it was meant to benefit them and also to honor the Lord.
Among the various commands we read today is one that requires merciful treatment for foreigners, orphans, and widows (24:17, 18). For James, this kind of positive action is precisely what constitutes true religion for Christian followers of Jesus.1 There we find the Hebraic insistence that faith must entail faithfulness (obedient action). In case we miss his point, James further defines faith,2 wonderfully conveyed by The Message version: ‘Isn’t it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense?’
When defining their faith, Christians often begin by referring to what they believe about Jesus. Certainly, a true Christian cannot hold erroneous beliefs about our Lord. As Deuteronomy shows, however, trusting God is more than mere intellectual assent to creeds or systematic theologies. Interestingly, the New Testament Greek word for faith, pistis, like its Hebrew equivalent, also conveys the notion of ‘faithfulness.’ This means that genuine Christian faith is eminently practical. It demands that a professing believer’s right thinking about Jesus is fleshed out in right living based on biblical teaching. Our lives may be the only Bible many people ever read!
Apply
Whenever you read the Bible, ask yourself: how does the passage before you inform what you believe and provide you with guidelines by which to live?
Closing prayer
Father, I pray that the faith I profess will be reflected in the life I lead and show others who you are.
1 James 1:27 2 James 2:17
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