Deuteronomy 3-6

It took me almost 30 minutes to read this passage; it is very long.  I see a lesson in 6:20-24 that is helpful to me; always remember from where God has delivered you.  God didn’t want Israel to think that they “earned” the right to live in the land he had promised Abraham.  Israel was given the land.  They had to participate in the battles, they had to obey God’s lead in dealing with the people that were inhabiting the land, but it was still a gift from God.  Forty years before Moses wrote these words some of the rebellious people of Israel tried to take the land from the inhabitants (Numbers 14:39-45).  God displayed this truth; you can TAKE a gift from God, but he will give it to you in his time.  So Moses warned the people in Deuteronomy to teach their children all about what God had given them.  Teach them that the land is not theirs and they are allowed to live in it as a living gift from God.  To reject God as the provider of the land that they were  possessing would be to reject God all together and therefore loose the land.  We Christians today can see this same lesson in the grace that we have.  We have been given God’s grace, in keeping with his promise to Abraham and all the saints after him.  We can’t do anything to TAKE God’s grace for ourselves, but he has freely given it to us on his conditions and in his time.  And we never want to forget the place, a live overwhelmed by sin, from where God saved us.

Stuart