Category: Deuteronomy

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Deuteronomy 30 before reading the devotional below.

Several months ago, we were watching an old episode of The Amazing Race, a TV show in which teams of two race from pitstop to pitstop all the way around the world.  One team had clearly gotten lost. They were hiking uphill through the woods. An hour into the hike, they began to wonder if they were going the wrong direction.  Three hours into the hike, they were sure they were going the wrong direction. “But we have to keep going,” they said. “We’ve gone this far.” They had emotionally invested too much in going the wrong direction.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t get back on track until they turned around.

In Deuteronomy 30, God shows both his incredibly wisdom and his breathtaking love.  In his wisdom, he knows that his people will wander off track. They will disobey him, and God will release them to experience the consequences of their disobedience.  They will lose the land God has provided, the harvests God has provided, and the safety that God has provided. They will be brought as exiles to a far off land, returned in a sense to the state God had found them in Egypt before he graciously saved them.  Any Israelite who finds himself in that situation might be tempted to give up hope. But in that moment, God promises to still listen for the cries of his people. He promises to once again rescue and transform them. Even when God disciplines his people, he never abandons them.

God loves you. When you fail or falter or rebel, God still loves you. When you are as far away from God as you can imagine being, God still loves you.  Because of that incredible love, you can always turn back to him and find the forgiveness and acceptance that you long for. All it takes is courage: courage to admit your sin, courage to be humble before God, courage to ask for help.  God can (and does) promise to lovingly take you back. You will only find out the truth of that promise when you take the risk and return to God.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Deuteronomy 31 before reading the devotional below.

Several years ago, I went on a retreat.  It was a 3-day encounter with the Holy Spirit, and it changed my life.  On the final day, just before we went home, the leaders had us write letter to ourselves.  It was dated one year in the future. Our assignment was to not open it until the date on the letter.  Then we would have a message that reminded us of what we’d experienced. Much would change in that year, but it was a reminder of the things that hadn’t changed.

In the life of Israel, much was changing.  Moses was handing off the leadership to Joshua his protege.  The Israelites were leaving the desert and entering their promised inheritance.  They would live in houses and cities instead of in tents. They would put down roots instead of constantly being on the move.  So Moses makes one final command. They people of God are to publically reread the entire law together once every seven years. Imagine that – the entire country gathering together just for the reading of the law.  It would be a time of refocusing and celebration. It would be a time of remembering what’s important and setting aside distractions.

Read it often. Don’t just look for new things.  Look for reminders. God has given you his word to help you come back to what really matters when life is full of distractions and secondary issues.  The word of God is an incredible gift. The people of Israel had to gather together to hear the word of God read outloud. We can now do it on our phones, our laptops, our tablets.  The word of God is everywhere. Now all we have to do is read it.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Deuteronomy 32 before reading the devotional below.

I looked out a second floor window in downtown Atlanta as dusk settled and commuters headed home for the day.  I was on a week-long mission trip, and that one moment changed my life. I experienced a sense of solitude that I had previously only connected with nature.  It was the feeling I had sitting alone along the side of a lake or standing at the edge of a cliff getting lost in the awe-inspiring view. It was a private and intimate encounter with God, and it led me to write.  I don’t write much poetry, but the experience of those twilight moments in Atlanta could only be expressed as a poem.

Deuteronomy 32 captures all the major themes of Deuteronomy and re-expresses them in poetry.  There is the theme of God’s faithfulness and Israel’s unfaithfulness, the themes of justice and idolatry and obedience.  These themes are now expressed in the deeply passionate, profoundly artistic medium of poetry. Poems must always be read differently.  They invite us to read with our hearts, not just our heads. They use symbols and word pictures and comparisons that are designed to evoke feelings and reactions.  That means that poems can’t be skimed asif they were a news story on CNN or Fox News. Poems must be read slowly, carefully and imaginatively.

He wants to engage your mind, your heart, your soul and your will. God designed you as a multifaceted person, and he deeply values each aspect of your being.  A fully orbed relationship with God is mentally stimulating and passionate and obedient. It challenges the mind, the heart and the will. Most importantly, God never asks you to reject one of these aspects of yourself in favor of the others.  In fact, the design of God’s truth is to draw your mind, heart and will into one fully integrated being. That is what God’s truth promises to do: it will make you more yourself by drawing together all the disparate and disintegrated parts of who you are in order to recreate an image of God that shines through the totality of your being.  

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Deuteronomy 33 before reading the devotional below.

Several years ago, we had a famous pastor come and speak at our church.  He pastors a huge church, he’s been on the cover of Time magazine, he’s written a host of books, and he is very influential within our movement.  All in all, people were wildly excited to come and hear him speak. Except me. I was more excited because he was bringing one of his associate pastors with him.  This associate pastor is largely unknown outside his own church, but to me he is a rock star. He is one of the men who have helped me define my own calling, even though we’d only met once.  When they first arrived, the associate pastor walked up to me and said, “Hey Josh! What’s going on, man?” I found myself thinking “Wow…he knows my name?”

There’s something powerful about finding out that you aren’t lost in a crowd.  In Deuteronomy 34 Moses, the great leader of God’s people, speaks his final words.  These words are different from all the words that have come before, however. All the words of Deuteronomy have been addressed to all the Israelites, to the whole nation.  These final words are more personal though. Israel is broken up into twelve major family groups, called tribes. Moses addresses each tribe individually offering a specific blessing unique to that  family.

Just as God spoke through Moses to each of those families individually, God sees you and knows you in all your uniqueness.  He values you because you are you – different from anyone else in the entire world. God has singled you out, wanting to have a unique relationship with you.  It won’t be the same relationship he has with anyone else. He won’t just be having a relationship with everyone in your church or everyone in your family. He sees you individually.  He loves you individually. He knows your name.

Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Deuteronomy 34 before reading the devotional below. 

Congratulations!! You’ve made it to the end of our Deuteronomy series — a lengthy Old Testament book with some pretty big challenges to explore. If you missed any chapters, you can always look up each series by category on the sidebar.

In today’s passage, we see the death of a fearless leader, Moses. In his final earthly meeting with God, he gets to survey the entire Promised Land. Even though he was unable to go into the land due to his failure to follow all of God’s commands, he can still taste the victory for the people of Israel.

Not too many people are strong with good eyesight at age 120. Times were different back then and God kept Moses alive and strengthened for a very special mission. I’m personally glad that he doesn’t typically wait until we are 80 years old anymore to set out our life purpose! As Moses dies, we see a transition of leadership to Joshua, who will lead God’s people into the Promised Land. (To keep going with this story, read on into the book of Joshua.)

God promised to deliver his people out of slavery in Egypt and to give them the land that he had already promised to Abraham years before. Moses’ leadership took God’s people right up to that promise, although it required one more generation to see its fulfillment due to the disobedience of Moses and the people. Even when we mess things up, God keeps his end of the bargain. His final talk with Moses was to show him all that he had worked for. God made sure that the people would take the land as promised. Sometimes we have to wait for God to make good on his promises, but he never fails to deliver. What are you waiting on God for today?