HE IS YOUR PRAISE
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Opening Prayer
Lord God, I want to know you better, to love you more fully, to walk with you more closely. Use your Word today to instruct me, to inspire me, to enable me.
Read DEUTERONOMY 10
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Tablets Like the First Ones
10 At that time the Lord said to me, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain. Also make a wooden ark.[a] 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Then you are to put them in the ark.”
3 So I made the ark out of acacia wood and chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. 4 The Lord wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the Ten Commandments he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the Lord gave them to me. 5 Then I came back down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark I had made, as the Lord commanded me, and they are there now.
6 (The Israelites traveled from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died and was buried, and Eleazar his son succeeded him as priest. 7 From there they traveled to Gudgodah and on to Jotbathah, a land with streams of water. 8 At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister and to pronounce blessings in his name, as they still do today. 9 That is why the Levites have no share or inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the Lord is their inheritance, as the Lord your God told them.)
10 Now I had stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, as I did the first time, and the Lord listened to me at this time also. It was not his will to destroy you. 11 “Go,” the Lord said to me, “and lead the people on their way, so that they may enter and possess the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.”
Fear the Lord
12 And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
14 To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. 15 Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. 16 Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. 20 Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. 21 He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. 22 Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 10:1 That is, a chest
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
Praise God from your heart, knowing that you are only reaching the outskirts of his wonderful reality.
Moses is reaching the end of his long introduction (chs. 5–11) to Deuteronomy. We are reminded that he received a new version of the Ten Commandments; there is a small digression on the death of Aaron (a sadder end than that of Moses) and a short excursion on the place of Levites in Israelite society.
Then Moses says, ‘And now …’ (v. 12, emphasis added) words commonly used in the Old Testament to introduce a summary. Readverses 12–22, slowly, several times, allowing them to reverberate in your memory since you have met so many of these words, especially the verbs, in previous chapters. Notice the words ‘for your own good’ in verse 13. The Ten Commandements do not slam us into a prison; they open us out into a garden. Moses insists that circumcision of the body is not enough—the badge of the covenant is not an external badge; it is a matter of the heart as Jeremiah and Paul later taught.1
Finally, ponder verses 17 and 18. Rabbi Yohanan in the third century wrote a short homily on these verses which has passed into the Jewish liturgy for the end of Shabbat: even though God is so high and awe-inspiring, he cares for the orphan, the widow, the stranger. This is found in the Prophets2 and in the Psalms,3 as well. It is also, of course, a theme in the New Testament.4 Is your behavior God-like in this respect? Do you notice the low, the lost, the lonely?
Apply
Is there someone I should visit or call or write to? Not for my reputation, but because in order to worship God we must grow to be like him.
Closing prayer
Great God, show me new ways to serve you, to reach out to others in your name and bring you glory.
1 Jer 4:4; Rom 2:28, 29 2 e.g. Isa 57:15 3 e.g. Ps 68:5, 6 4 e.g. Matt 5:3–12
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