“All the mitzvot I am giving you today you are to take care to obey, so that you will live, increase your numbers, enter and take possession of the land Adonai swore about to your ancestors.”-Deuteronomy 8:1
Does it seem like Moses is more or less just repeating himself here in Deuteronomy Chapter 8?
Well…that’s because he is.
Like a good teacher, he is trying to communicate things in different ways from different angles in the hopes that what he’s saying will finally sink into the minds and hearts of his audience.
Let’s take a good look at verse one.
Verse One represents a basic formula that is key to achieving the blessed life.
In fact, it’s so darn simple, most people will just pass right by it with noticing or understanding its significance
Here’s the formula:
Speaking to Israel, God says…
IF you do this…
…THEN I will do this for you.
Pretty darn simple, isn’t it?
Israel’s right to stay and thrive in the Promised Land is linked to their obedience to God’s Commands.
I think a lot of folks overlook this point.
We’ve got to understand that…
…when the Bible talks about being obedient to God, it REALLY MEANS being obedient to His written commands.
Got it?
I mean what the heck else is there to be obedient to?
Here’s the thing.
Over the centuries, the gentile church has developed this idea that how we’re supposed to live is somehow in some mysterious and supernatural way…
…directly transmitted from God on High to our minds.
And it’s because of this belief that God’s written word has been made to take second place to the instructions the Lord will input into our minds via the Holy Spirit.
Now I’m not saying that God can’t speak to us directly via dreams or by supernaturally inputting thoughts into our minds.
He absolutely can and He absolutely does.
Heck, He will even control the hearts and minds of unsaved gentiles when it serves his purposes just like when He controlled Pharaoh’s will when He destroyed Egypt right before the Exodus.
However, mystically imparting thoughts to our minds is NOT the normal everyday means by which God instructs us on how to live.
To achieve that end, He has already given us His Written Word.
He doesn’t have to go out of His Way to instruct us all over again through some mystical means.
Actually, if we do receive some mystical thought or idea we feel like we may have received from God, we’re supposed to check it against His Written Word to make sure it really is indeed an impulse from God…or not.
If it doesn’t match up against God’s Word, then we must discard that thought.
It could be a temptation from the evil one or an impulse originating from our own selfish desires or it could just be our imaginations gone outta control hog wild.
The TORAH is the believer’s spiritual constitution and the objective standard by which everything else must be measured.
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