“Therefore take great care to love Adonai your God.”
-Joshua 23:11
Verse 11 sums up the one-stop solution to all of the temptations, risks and dangers that await Israel if they should ever consider turning their backs against Hashem.
And that solution is…
…”take great care to love Adonai your God”.
It’s at this very point where a great divide exists between Christianity and Judaism.
For Christians, because they have discarded the very foundation of God’s Word, their definition of love is a very hazy concept based more on subjective feelings instead of cold, hard objective reality.
However, for the Jew, God’s love language is clear: OBEDIENCE.
To love God is to obey His commandments…
…whether you freakin’ feel like it or not.
Period.
Whenever a believer honors the Lord’s sabbath and refrains from eating unclean foods, he or she is loving God in the truest Biblical sense of the word.
Joshua’s message starts off on a positive note.
He reminds the people that the Lord has more than amply demonstrated His ability to fulfill ALL the promises He has made.
However, Joshua’s concluding note is that all of those blessings will be short-lived if they don’t maintain their allegiance and faithfulness to the Lord.
If Israel starts flirting with the other gods of the gentiles or starts to behave like the goyim nations around them who have not pledged allegiance to the God of Israel, then there’s gonna be trouble.
The Lord will consider those He has chosen as LO AMMI (not my people) and will then vomit them out of the land for their rebellion.
They will go back to the days of their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when they were foreigners without a land they could call their own.
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