Deuteronomy 6-9 – Warnings – Promises – Gratitude & Obedience to God-Part 4/4

Exodus 32:9-10

Then the LORD said, "I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. Now leave me alone so my fierce anger can blaze against them, and I will destroy them. Then I will make you, Moses, into a great nation."

  

Moses recounted the story in Deuteronomy 9:24-29 “You have been rebellious against the LORD ever since I have known you.  I lay prostrate before the LORD those forty days and forty nights because the LORD had said he would destroy you. I prayed to the LORD and said, "O Sovereign LORD, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Overlook the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness and their sin.  Otherwise, the country from which you brought us will say, 'Because the LORD was not able to take them into the land he had promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to put them to death in the desert.' But they are your people, your inheritance that you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm."

As I read Deuteronomy chapter 9 I fell in love with Moses heart and attitude toward God and prayed that I never depart from what He taught me.  Verses 24-29 touched my heart and even though I know God has already dealt with this part of my heart in how I respond to Him in my daily walk, I felt the need to pray to Him for my preservation.  Here is why.  In these verses, we have a great example of what it means to use the deposit God makes in us to draw close in oneness and intimacy. When we read about Moses in the Old Testament, we have to be completely out to lunch not to see the meekness in this man’s heart, attitude and actions. Even God acknowledged his meekness.  On more than one occasion, God wanted to destroy the Israelites and blotted their names out from under heaven. By the same token, he offered Moses to make him a great and mighty nation. If Moses had accepted God’s offer and promise, he would have been in his right to do so. He would have been entitled to it because God made the offer and He could not have taken it back if Moses answer was “yes”

In the end, those chapters of Deuteronomy that I have been talking about in the past three posts, teach us a lesson that all of us should aspire to. Moses’s attitude and response to God in regard to His offer to make him a powerful nation shows what it means to truly love God and be one with Him. When your heart has been touched by God through His gracious and generous Salvation, and when you understand through the Holy Spirit’s eyes what this walk with Him is all about, you do not see God’s promises to make you something or give you something. You are past that stage so much, it is almost like it has become the last thing on your list. Of course, this comes with Spiritual growth and maturity in the faith. You do not see the fact that He promised you a place in heaven. You do not care about the privileges you are entitled to as the King’s heir. None of these matters to you. All your heart could see is “His glory.” You could care less about all that He can do for you. I keep repeating myself here for a good reason. I want you to see it through your spiritual eyes and I want to pay attention to it.

This kind of growth happens only when we become so merged with Him, regardless how long we have been a Christian, as we live in His Holiness and His righteousness, the self has been annihilated so much, that you are watching yourself not being elated by His promises to give you something especially IF IT IS AT HIS OWN EXPENSES. With the self being dealt with, there is room only for Him to live His life within you so much so, that your answer to Him is always according to what Christ would respond. Hence why, Moses did not want this blessing in Exodus 32:10. I love the fact that there is a paradox there. You would be wrong to think that Moses had the power to refuse something like God promised to make him “a great nation" without God’s grace at work in him. 

When this kind of things happens to you, it is like you are watching someone else doing things within you because you know there is no way on earth you would not go for His offer instead. When things like that happen, you know without a doubt that it is not you who is living this life but Him in you. You are jealous for His reputation and your answer to Him contains the same kind of motive, attitude and love that you see in Moses answer in Deuteronomy 9:28. The funny thing is, when you sort of sit down to think about what just happened there, you cannot help asking yourself why is it there is something in you that is guarding God so jealously that it feels as if you are completely forgetting that God can take care of Himself. Yet, you cannot help it simply because you are living out Galatians 2:20 in full fledge.

 I am not saying that we should not enjoy God’s promises. Oh No! That would be so wrong, I would not know how to describe it. I personally truly enjoy God’s promises and I live with expectancy in my heart. But what I am saying is that His promises are at the bottom of your list when your heart gets hold of Him. When you get what Salvation means, according to His plans, you actually find the next best things are a heart filled with gratitude toward Him, a strengthen faith a need to obey and you are watching His Agape love permeates your heart slowly.  In living out the real Christian life, in spirit, you will find out all these things I mentioned above come way before you even think about what’s in it for you.

This is why I keep saying, if after decades of calling ourselves Christian and we know nothing else about Him except holding on to His promises like a dog with a bone, then we miss the point of Salvation completely.  The Israelites already had this mentality and it did not work for God at all. In the end, God did not fail the Israelites and He did not fail in His promises to them. The truth is, they failed God! When we fail to know God and walk with Him in the way He planned for us, Moses tells us exactly in Deut 9:27, we are there because of our sin, our rebellious heart, and wickedness. Ask yourself, when was the last time you examine your heart to meet with God face to face and deal with your sinful and wicked heart?  Most of us can’t. We do not even accept the fact that we are wicked. We have no problem seeing it in unbelievers while we act as if it is not for us. I noticed whenever I speak about my wicked heart; I offend the people I am talking to. They have a need to correct me and usually they are quick to blame the devil for me feeling this way or even acknowledge that I have a wicked heart.

I could go on for days with what I see in Deuteronomy that we need to apply in our lives today. But I will stop there. I pray that God would touch your heart and that you would be moved to give Him the love and obedience that is due to Him. I pray that you would learn to see that Christianity cannot be compartmentalized, but it is a lifestyle lived out in Him and through Him!

Deuteronomy 6-9 – Warnings – Promises – Gratitude & Obedience to God-Part 3

As I read Deuteronomy 6 – 9, I kept asking myself why is it most of us Christians dismiss those words of God when in reality they are there in black and white? How do we manage to find it so natural and easy to claim God's promises while dismissing what accompany His promises?

I am sure all of us Christians are familiar with a very popular and partial verse that Christians love saying “the Lord is faithful and He keeps His covenant.” But one look at Deuteronomy 7:9-11 you will see it is a partial truth we tell ourselves because God has conditions there. He also talked about those who love Him and keep His commandments.

I heard a well known pastor saying that since we are under grace, then, the conditions no longer applied to us, otherwise it would not be grace and grace is free. If only we can learn the meaning of God’s grace through the Holy Spirit’s teaching, we would understand it is exactly because we are under grace these conditions apply.  Yes, grace is totally free.  Grace transforms us, and because of His grace Christ lives within us. If indeed we are under His grace, then fulfilling His conditions become part of our own will, because we have the will of God within us to do, and to bring Him glory.

We are so creative when it comes to dismissing God's word. Like the Pharisees we get so busy covering up the lack of God in our lives and sadly, we get caught up in our own hype. Through it all, we are incapable of seeing the same God that we find in the Old and New Testament. Most of us are incapable of translating into our lives, the conditions and warnings found in the Old Testament, for what they mean to today’s Christians.

When you look at the Israelite’s path, meaning their ungratefulness, the blindness, lack of love, faith and their harden hearts, we see they have never changed from the time God left them to die in the wilderness. As we can see in Jeremiah, after decades of warning, they never took God at His word, always assumed they would be fine and never felt the need to change. In the end they lost the Promised Land just like God promised He would do if they did not follow according to His idea of what following Him meant.  Much later we find the Pharisees caught up in their religiosity, the word of God had not penetrated their hearts, and once again they did what was best for them, which means they killed their king. Can you see how easy it is to follow blindly the wrong path in our spiritual ignorance, blindness and lack of humility?

Sometimes, I am discouraged and feel like it’s a losing battle because hell is going to have way too  many Catholics, Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical, Adventist, Mormons, popes, pastors, priests, church leaders, nuns, etc. The list goes on. I can see the blindness which is so thick out there. The Spiritual ignorance that is leading the Church, while each one of them thinks it is the other one. Because of our lack of true Christianity, most of us have no idea what it means to be healed of our messy emotions that lead our lives.

Sometimes when I think of Christ dying on the Cross and tore the veil, my heart is overwhelms because I know too well what that means. This veil that has been removed gives us access to the Holy of Holies. Yet, the majority of Christians is living with no idea what it means for God to have removed the veil. One of the reasons the Israelites never get there, is because they could not switch gears and make it about God. No, it was like asking them for too much. Although God repeated several times in Deuteronomy that they were chosen not because they were impressive, but rather He chose them out of pure grace, it still did not sink into their hearts. And as long as they could not get them in their thick heads and in their harden hearts, they could never find gratefulness and gratitude to honour Him for who He is. They could never humble themselves in the way God truly sees them, so they took everything for granted. 

Deuteronomy 6-9 - Warnings - Promises - Gratitude & Obedience to God-Part 2

The other day I met a lady in the shopping center. I know her and her husband from my previous Church.  Although I used to interact mainly with her husband, when I saw her she smiled at me. I stopped and inquired about how her family was doing. Then, knowing very well they were part of what God has called me to leave behind, I inquired about her spiritual growth. She went on telling me how much they are growing in the Lord and how important it is to keep growing etc. She then asked me a question about myself, I said, unfortunately God told me He wants me in the background. She then answered what do you mean God told you? How do you know it is God? I responded, because I interact with Him on a daily basis and because I have a relationship with the triune God within. She then replied, “don't tell me you can hear God.” I said of course I can hear God talking to me in the new heart. Then the lady dismissed me like an old dirty sock and walked away while she is saying “I have to go”. I could tell from her attitude she felt, somehow I have become a deranged person.

Afterward, I felt bad as if I let God down. I knew this lady was going to talk to her husband and both of them would agree that I am crazy. I felt even as she was leaving, I should have given her at least one verse reference to this fact. I guess one of the reasons I am stuck in Deuteronomy 6-9 it is because I know too well how my previous church was like most Churches today. They function as if the God of the Old Testament is a God of the past and a God of history and the God of the New Testament is more loving. So they could not see anything wrong with practicing the kind of Christianity where everything is under some kind of cheap grace. This kind of teaching was such a stumbling block for me when the Holy Spirit decided to teach me Himself.

Once again, I will go down in history for saying we Protestants has taken way too much out of God's word. Yet we cannot see the big tree in our eyes because we are too busy judging the Catholics for adding too much. God is truly all knowing. He did not say these words in Deuteronomy 4:2 in vain. “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the LORD your God that I give you.” He knew an important group of people would add to His word another important one would take away from His word. The only way to find a balance is to rely on His grace. When God was dealing with the Israelites in the wilderness, it was His grace at work through them, even today, it is still His grace at work through us. – Nothing has changed, He is the same today and forever.

One of the first things He decided to teach me in the wilderness was to get rid of this kind of love that I felt for Him. I sobbed uncontrollably when He showed me that the only love I am capable of feeling for Him had nothing to do with the love that He talked about. By then, my heart was engulfed with gratitude for my salvation, so I truly thought I loved Him. You can imagine how bad I felt when I recognized within me, I did not have the capacity even to do something as simple as loving Him. I cried because I felt I had nothing to offer this big God. I remember the Holy Spirit consoles me as He explained to me how it was okay for me to offer a defective human love (Philos love) to Him. He also taught me as long as I am willing to let Him take my defective love and change it into His agape love, that’s all it takes.  A few years down the road He showed me how I am making use of His agape love flowing in my heart.

Without going to God in humility, we keep recycling and loving God with the same kind of feelings of friendship love that the unbelievers use to love each other. The love God is talking about in the Bible is so much more than what we know and what we have to offer. This Godly love that we are commanded to love our God with, as well as our brothers and sisters in Christ and also the unbelievers, is not the kind of love that we withdraw “just because.” In time, I also understood why it took God so long to finally show me His agape love was now flowing through me. Like anything that belongs to Him that we have to make use of, He has to first empty us. Whether we talk about His Holiness, His Righteousness or His Agape Love, if we are too full of the self, He needs to empty us first before He can fill us up with Himself.

With all my heart, I did not care about this lady dismissal of me as she walked away. God already made it clear to me that I am not going to gather friends by speaking the truth that He taught me. If I were to care about myself, this would mean I have not learned to serve one God, and man’s opinion still matters a great deal. Paul told us it is wrong in Galatians 1:10. God has dealt with my heart over the years to learn to focus on serving Him and let Him deal with man’s opinion of me. But, my heart was aching knowing that, this lady's husband is well respected in the Church and he is part of the leadership. He also has a bible study group that I attended once in early 2000 a few months after I became a Christian. I care because I missed an opportunity to let God use me properly. I care because I realized since I left the Church, the pastor is different, but the teaching has not changed much. It makes sense when you consider the pastor who took over was a mentor to the previous one.

So, as I read Deuteronomy 6-9 I kept asking myself, how on earth can a Christian read these chapters and not seeing the cheap grace that permeates the Church then, and now?  I ask myself why do we take it all for granted, and throw “diligence” out of the window while living with the assumption that it is okay to do that to God. One of the reasons cheap grace permeates the Church so much is because, like the Israelites, we have never learned to let His grace help us love Him with all our heart. It is only by learning to love Him with all our heart that the self can fade away while the heart and soul embrace the saviour and take on His interests alone. 

Sadly, often times, we have followed a path for so long that we cannot get off of it even if we wanted to. So, when we hear the truth and it does not sit well with us, most of the time we automatically respond with our fragile ego. We use it as a shield to protect us from our fear and shame. But just the fact that our ego is leading, should be a major indication that we are nowhere near where we should be with God. Like the Israelites the only thing that was leading them in the wilderness was their ego. When the ego (the self) has not been dealt, with then we have nothing to offer as we insist on living in the flesh. The moment the flesh is leading there is no room for the Holy Spirit to be heard and to work within us. It makes sense because we already have a master at work, why would we need the Holy Spirit's leadership?

God is good.  He made arrangement for me to see this lady again, three days after our first encounter. It is funny that I did not see them since 2007 and suddenly I got to see the wife twice in three days. When I saw her I took her on the side and told  her, the other day I made her uncomfortable for saying that I could hear God, but I had no intention of offending her simply because God’s word says "my sheep hears my voice" She looked at me straight in my eyes, changed the subject while walking away. I was at peace knowing that I did what I had to do. I gave her something to think about and will no longer worry about my part, the rest is up to God.

Deuteronomy 6-9 - Warnings - Promises - Gratitude & Obedience to God Part 1

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I have been stuck in Deuteronomy 6-9 for three days now. I read them over and over and each time I am overwhelmed by Who God is. I find myself meditating on Him and His promises, accompanied by warnings.

Deuteronomy Chapter 6 teaches that we have to obey God in order to prosper. I do not care to talk about the prosperity part because we all know what He had in mind for the Israelites. But I get stuck when I read His demands. For instance, Deuteronomy 6:5 says: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” I get stuck because I realized how much God never changes. His requirements of us are always the same. For the first time, it dawned on me how many times He repeated the same thing to us in Mathew, Luke, twice in Mark, and three times in Deuteronomy.

Then in verse 7 He put the responsibility of teaching their children not only to walk a daily righteous walk with God, but also with gratitude in their hearts because they were also bound by the conditions God had imposed on their parents which basically was “obey walk with me or else there are drastic consequences.”  Again, it was not the first time I was reading that but it was the first time I noticed the depth of the reality of His demand as He used the word DILIGENT twice in the same chapter. (v7 & 17) He is telling us not only we have to teach them, but we have to make sure they understand it and incorporate it in their lives.

But the word diligent implied a life completely focus on Him. Diligence demands complete abandon to what our heart is aiming for and diligence consumes everything and every decision and everywhere we turn. The word diligence, forces us to see what we have received from God is our most treasured prize possession. So, as parents, how do we do that with our own children if we have not gone forward with Him for ourselves in diligence so that we can acquire patience, sound judgment, and wisdom and so on.

God also kept telling the Israelite to fear Him. But if you noticed, He never stopped at

"FEAR THE LORD YOUR GOD" He made sure we understand that this fear should be motivated by love and gratitude. Why do you think God bothers to make sure we understand that? Simply because if we do things just out of fear, then there cannot be fellowship with Him, it also means there is no faith.  Fellowship was God’s goal with Israel and it is His goal with us. He said to us: “draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you”  Notice that it seems like He is asking us to take the first step, but in reality He is saying if you truly received what I gave you and it has become your prize possession, then draw near to me. How do I know that? Well, God taught me through Romans 6: If you read Romans 6 with the Holy Spirit’s guidance you will see it all over the chapter. But Paul spelled it out for us in verse 16 when he said: “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?”

So, the word of God tells us that we live life surrendered and near to God or we live surrendered and near the Flesh and Satan.

 Furthermore, look at the way chapter 6 ends with verse 25 “For we will be counted as righteous when we obey all the commands the LORD our God has given us.'

The word of God tells us by living with diligence, with is a lifestyle, dedication, abandonment; through obedience, love, gratitude and knowledge of Him bring pleasure to Him. The end result is righteousness.

Part 2, tomorrow!