WE WILL HEAR AND DO IT
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Opening Prayer
I wait on you, Lord, to teach me through your Word today. Use it to train me so that I can know your blessing in greater and greater measure.
Read DEUTERONOMY 5:22–33
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
22 These are the commandments the Lord proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.
23 When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leaders of your tribes and your elders came to me. 24 And you said, “The Lord our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks with them. 25 But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us, and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. 26 For what mortal has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and survived? 27 Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you. We will listen and obey.”
28 The Lord heard you when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, “I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said was good. 29 Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!
30 “Go, tell them to return to their tents. 31 But you stay here with me so that I may give you all the commands, decrees and laws you are to teach them to follow in the land I am giving them to possess.”
32 So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. 33 Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.
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
‘I call on you with all my heart; answer me, LORD, and I will obey your decrees.’1
My imagination awakes as I picture the scene when the Law was given by God—the fire, the cloud, the thick darkness, the earthquake, the loud voice, and the writing. Many Israelites thought, in those days, that to see God was to die.2 The assembly begs Moses to mediate for them (note the word ‘all’ in verse 27) and they vow that they will hear the word of the Lord and do it. Do we have a comparable sense of wonder and joy that, through the Bible and the Holy Spirit, we have a revelation from God? Psalm 119 spends 176 verses extolling the wonders of the laws, the statutes, the ordinances. David, in Psalm 19, writes of the heavens declaring the glory of God and compares the ‘law of the Lord’ to the sun, which warms all the earth. Once a year the Jews celebrate the giving of the Law on the day called ‘Simchat Torah’. The sacred scrolls are taken out of their ark and the people dance with joy, often for several hours. It is a joy and a wonder that there is a living God and he speaks to us.
The Lord is pleased with the Israelites’ response (vv. 28, 29), but he has a realistic understanding of the people’s frailties. Trace the verbs used in verses 29–33 which, then and now, expand and deepen our understanding of what walking in the ways of the Lord really means. Let’s conclude by focusing on the words ‘be careful to do’ (v. 32), a phrase that recurs throughout the book of Deuteronomy.
Apply
What steps are you taking today and every day to ‘be careful to do’ everything that you hear from and know about God and his will and ways?
Closing prayer
I give thanks, Father, for men and women everywhere who hear the Word of God and do it— putting into practice what they hear, sometimes with very slender resources.
1 Judg 13:22; Isa 6:5
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