This way to a new life
Every day we're reading or listening to part of the Bible together and sharing thoughts with you. Today it’s Bern Leckie:
What did I like about today’s passage?
While there is a lot of difficult detail in this passage, I love the sense of change and potential that God is creating. This whole book is a covenant treaty and it frames new instructions for living with stories showing why big changes are necessary and made possible by God.
The world in which these stories are set is far, far from perfect, and life is difficult for many people in different ways. One example is the effort needed simply to carry on existing, especially if growing food is difficult, the climate challenging and the land unyielding. Egypt, described in chapter 11, was relatively well developed and fruitful, but it sounds a bit like the product of the fall in Genesis 3. Cut off from God’s direct presence, people would have to sweat and toil to gain anything from the land.
I love the contrast in the description of Israel’s promised land, that it “drinks rain from heaven” as well as flowing with milk and honey. It’s almost like being let back into Eden and restored by the presence and blessings of God. This is what Israel wanted. This is the direction God was setting. Move this way, physically and with your hearts, and be restored.
It’s mainly believed that Deuteronomy was written long after Moses and by people well informed by history that this ideal state was not sustained. People took the promised land physically, but their hearts did not make the leap. The closeness to God, purity, generosity and justice described were simply not what the writers saw. And yet they saw the direction God had set for them by the covenant and stories remembered. Could they still get there?
What did it show me about Father God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit?
God works across history towards a restoration of closeness between people and himself. He knows that we have a distance to travel and need guidance along the way. So he gave many detailed, prescriptive laws for Israel to govern aspects of life, worship, relationships and lifestyle – even down to details of what could be eaten or not.
These laws sometimes had health benefits, but sometimes simply required people to accept God’s rule and moderate their conflicting desires. They were guiding people to him. We know from Peter’s visions in the New Testament that God can allow all food to be eaten, so the laws in themselves are not God’s final destination for us. He is. But for us to be restored to closeness with God, he has to guide us through changes of mind, heart, desires and life.
What am I going to do differently as a result?
I’m grateful that Jesus called people to follow him in order to find closeness to God. While we don’t have these laws, God still wants our minds to be changed by him. I must let him.
Who am I going to share this with?
People I pray and follow Jesus with – we need to be mindful that “repent” is his lifelong call.