LOVE PRIORITIES

LOVE PRIORITIES

Deuteronomy 10:12-22 NET.

¹² Now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you except to revere him, to obey all his commandments, to love him, to serve him with all your mind and being, ¹³and to keep the Lord’s commandments and statutes that I am giving you today for your own good? ¹⁴The heavens — indeed the highest heavens — belong to the LORD your God, as does the earth and everything in it. ¹⁵ However, only to your ancestors did he show his loving favor, and he chose you, their descendants, from all peoples — as is apparent today. ¹⁶ Therefore, cleanse your heart and stop being so stubborn! ¹⁷ For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe, ¹⁸ who justly treats the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing. ¹⁹ So you must love the resident foreigner because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.

²⁰ Revere the LORD your God, serve him, be loyal to him and take oaths only in his name. ²¹ He is the one you should praise; he is your God, the one who has done these great and awesome things for you that you have seen. ²² When your ancestors went down to Egypt, they numbered only seventy, but now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky.

The title of the book of Deuteronomy comes from the Latin for second Law. Moses is in the final phase of his life and ministry. He knows that he will not be going with the children of Israel when they cross over the Jordan and begin occupying the Promised Land. So, he writes Deuteronomy – not as a new Law for his people, but as a reflection on the basic principles of the Law God had given him at Sinai. He knows that if his people are to succeed, they will have to get over their stubborn selfishness and think and live God’s way. He searches for a way to summarize all that it means to live like the people who have been redeemed from slavery by a loving, compassionate God.

The big picture – the basic principles that Moses writes about in today’s text is the same message we get from Jesus in the New Testament. When the experts in the religious law came to Jesus to interrogate him, they asked him which commandment in the Law was the greatest. Jesus quickly answered that question by quoting from Deuteronomy. He said, “‘Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ – a quote from Deuteronomy 6:5. Before the lawyers had a chance to redirect, he went on to say, “This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ That is a quote from Leviticus 19:18, but the principle is taught again in today’s text from Deuteronomy. These two commands go together and constitute the gist of God’s requirements for his people. He wanted them to love him and others. Jesus condemned his generation of Israelites because they sought to love God by hating others. But what Moses taught in Deuteronomy and what Jesus taught in his parable of the Good Samaritan is that you cannot truly love God if you refuse to love all those around you – particularly those who need you.

Today, I want to break down the message of Deuteronomy 10:12-22 into its various parts and analyze each part. I want to do essentially what an appliance repair technician does. I realize I am dating myself by this illustration. Nowadays, when you have a toaster that does not work, you throw it away and get another toaster. But back in the old days, we had people that we called appliance repair technicians. What these people did was take apart the appliance and examine each part to find out which parts were working and which needed to be repaired or replaced. Once they repaired the damaged part, they put the toaster back together again, and now your old useless toaster was new and useful again.

What we want to do for today’s text is examine all the principles in the word carefully to see which ones are working and which ones need to be understood and applied correctly. The problem is not really like the problem in the toaster. There is no part of God’s word anywhere that is defective and needs to be replaced. But it is entirely possible that – like the Israelites in Jesus’ day – we are incorrect in our application of God’s word. So, here we go. We will break down all the principles taught in today’s text to see which ones we need to refresh and apply more correctly.

Loving God must be the priority.

Moses taught the children of Israel that their first priority in life was to love their Creator and Savior, God. He also broke down that principle into its component parts, wanting his relatives to know precisely which God they were to prioritize.

So, he talks about God the way we sometimes do when we pray the simple prayer at meals: God is great, and God is good. He is great because there is no one higher than him. Everything and everyone belongs to him. The whole planet and everything above it also belong to him. He “ is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God.”

The theologians speak of this aspect of who God is when they define him by pointing out the three ways that he is different from all his creations.

We cannot measure up to God in terms of space because he is everywhere, and we are not. We are confined to one place and one time, while he lives in every place at all times.

Also, unlike us, God is unchangeable. His greatness and nature do not change. Nothing we do can change him into something else other than what he has always been.

The third way God is different from us is his life does not and cannot ever come to an end. He existed before anything or anyone ever lived. The Bible says that he alone possesses immortality (1 Timothy 6:16). The only way any creature can ever become immortal is by means of his grace. God has promised believers eternal life, but we should not be arrogant like those who claim that all people are born immortal. That is not what the Bible teaches.

In summary, God is great because he is unmeasurable, immutable, and immortal. We are challenged to love God with all our mind and being. We will find it difficult to obey that command because God is so different from us. But God makes it easier because of what he has done for us. He gave us life to begin with. He gave us forgiveness, restoration, and deliverance. God is great, but he is also good. We can love God by focusing on all the good things he has done for us and all of his internal goodness. This includes his holiness, righteousness, faithfulness, integrity, graciousness, loyalty to his covenant, and kindness toward those who believe and trust in him.

We have many reasons for loving God, but it still comes down to our choice. He has created us with the power to love freely, which means we also can reject him, be unfaithful to him, rebel against him, and disobey his commands.

Loving God requires a change of attitude and action.

Moses outlines all of the components of this toaster and identifies all the changes in our attitude that will be necessary if we are to love God truly.

We need to stop being indifferent about God and start revering him. Reverence is a kind of fear. It is not the fear a person might have of a rabid, snarling animal. That is fear, but it is not reverence. Reverence is like the attitude you might have toward your boss if you are starting work at a new job. If you have decided to work for this new boss, you want to please her. You want to say and do the things that will make your new boss happy. You want her to be grateful that you are working in her office. You might notice that your new boss’s desk is neat and orderly, so you will decide to tidy up your desk so she is not displeased with its appearance. You might notice that when you come to work, your boss is always there already. You will decide to be punctual so that your boss will approve. That is what reverence is. It is not fear of punishment. It is seeking to please someone to whom you are already committed. That is the first attitude change that Moses suggests in verse 12.

We need to determine to stop ignoring all of God’s commands and start obeying them. Obedience is an attitude that is expressed by actions. Human beings are created with the ability to follow commands. Unfortunately, we are also capable of resenting commands, rebelling against the ones who give commands, and demanding independence from any authority. God does not tell us to unthinkingly submit to anyone who wants us to do anything. He tells us to obey him. He requires that we follow all of his commandments. He does not say that we can make a list of his commandments and cross off all the ones that we cannot understand or that we do not want to obey. Obedience is the attitude that predisposes us to pay attention to what God wants and directs us away from the inclination only to do what we want.

God does not tell us to stop caring about ourselves. What he wants us to do is to care about him as well. He wants us to change our focus so that who we care about is not determined by our needs and desires. He wants us to love him first.

God does not want us to stop serving ourselves and others. He wants us to focus on serving him with all our mind and being. The Hebrew literally says all our hearts and throats. The heart is the symbol for the blood’s circulation, and the throat is the symbol for the breath’s circulation. He wants us to serve him as if our lives depend on serving him. That is not easy to do.

Loving God entails loving as God does.

The priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan thought that loving God wholeheartedly meant staying focused on their religious traditions. Their lives centered around sacrifices and ceremonies and things they did for their congregations. It is very easy for 21st-century evangelical Christians to live like that, too. If we think that loving God means getting together for a special service every week and singing and praying together, we can become very much like that priest and Levite were.

But notice what Moses said about who God is and what he is focused on in verses 17-18:

“… God who is unbiased and takes no bribe, who justly treats the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing.”

If we revere our boss, we want to do things like she does, things that identify with what she focuses on. God is great, and God is good, and he demonstrates his goodness by internal integrity. He does not take bribes to pervert justice. He is unbiased. He does not treat some people with preferential treatment, nor does he ignore the needs of others. The priest and Levite in Jesus’ parable thought that they could ignore the man lying in a heap on the road because they had more important things to do rather than stop and help him. But God’s priority is helping the needy. If loving God is our priority, then we need to care for the needy too.

Loving others is loving as God loves.

God loves the orphan and the widow. He loves the resident foreigner, giving him food and clothing. Rahab and Ruth were resident foreigners. These were people who chose to live in the Israelite community even though they were not ethnically Jews.

When Jesus answered the lawyer’s question about the greatest commandments, he said the second greatest commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself. Immediately, the lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” He was not thinking according to the Law in Deuteronomy 10, or he would not have asked that question. According to Deuteronomy 10, loving our neighbors is loving the dispossessed and the underprivileged. It is reaching out to people who are not in the same socio-economic category as we are.

The LORD told the Israelites that they must love the resident foreigner because they were resident foreigners in the land of Egypt. When they get into the Promised Land, they will be first-class citizens. The resident foreigners will be those who choose to submit to their laws and live in their communities. God wanted his people to love those people. He wanted them to draw those people to him by their actions and by their care and consideration. He wanted his people to be his witnesses. He wanted them to testify to his character by their character.

Jesus told his disciples the same thing. He said they were to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). He wanted them to spread his love to every nation on the planet. Loving others had to be a priority for them, and it needs to be a priority for us.

EVERYTHING ALIVE

EVERYTHING ALIVE

Genesis 9:12-17 NET.

¹² And God said, “This is the guarantee of the covenant I am making with you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all subsequent generations: ¹³ I will place my rainbow in the clouds, and it will become a guarantee of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ then I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures of all kinds. Never again will the waters become a flood and destroy all living things. ¹⁶ When the rainbow is in the clouds, I will notice it and remember the perpetual covenant between God and all living creatures of all kinds that are on the earth.” ¹⁷ So God said to Noah, “This is the guarantee of the covenant that I am confirming between me and all living things that are on the earth.”

We are now on our 5^th day of the new year, which means that we are five days into our commitment to read two chapters a day in God’s holy word. I’m hoping that we all can keep to that commitment because I know that God wants to bless us with his wisdom and a closer relationship with him. The early chapters of Genesis teach us that God is holy and he wants to have a close relationship with his people. But he will not tolerate rebellion. Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden and so God banished them from it. That meant that our ancestors no longer had access to the Tree of Life. They were mortal, and our race began to die, starting with Abel, who his brother killed.

The rebellion continued among our ancestors and finally grew to such a degree that God could not tolerate it. Thus, God sent the flood to cover the planet in water and destroy all its inhabitants. But God is also merciful, and he chose one family of humans to rescue by his grace, along with the animals he chose to preserve for life after the flood. Genesis 9 describes the new covenant that God made with Noah, all humanity, and everything alive on this planet when the flood was over.

The version we are reading today uses the phrase “every living creature” to describe everything alive on the planet—humans and animals. That term is found in verses 12, 15, and 16. Verse 17 uses a synonym, “all living things.” Both terms refer to everything alive. The covenant God made was more comprehensive than we usually think. It was not made merely with Noah. It was a covenant with all the humans and animals on earth.

We should also note that the term for living creatures in verses 12, 15, and 16 reveals something that many religions (including many Christian denominations) refuse to accept. The average Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, and many others believe that the one thing that separates human beings from animals is that humans have souls, but animals do not.

One reason many Christians accept this doctrine is that many versions of Genesis 2:7 read something like the King James, which says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” This reading led many to accept the concept that humans are endowed with an immortal soul and animals do not have souls.

Some modern translations correct the KJV. The NET reads, “The LORD God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The reason they had to correct this is that the exact phrase that the KJV translated, “living soul,” is found elsewhere in the Bible to refer to animals. The phrase is found in today’s text three times. Every time, it refers explicitly to everything alive. The point is not that every animal has a soul. The point is that the word translated soul (Hebrew נֶפֶשׁ) means something that breathes. The verb נָפַשׁ means to breathe. A נֶפֶשׁ is a throat which breathes.

This is a very unpopular belief, but it is proven true by the Bible. The Bible nowhere says that human beings are immortal – not even a part of them. Having a soul does not make us immortal. In fact, it proves the opposite. We breathe every breath until we breathe our last breath. We are temporary creatures, just like every other living creature. Our hope in Christ is not that we will survive death but that he will return and make us alive again. We don’t have immortality naturally by being human. We hope for immortality supernaturally by means of resurrection.

Now, I’m saying all this not just because of a doctrine I espouse but because it is essential context to understand the passage we are looking at this morning. The covenant that God made, as expressed in Genesis 9, is often called the Noahic covenant. But in fact, God made the covenant not just with Noah and not even with all humanity. He made this covenant with everything alive on the planet.

This passage gives the reason for the covenant

Notice the phrase “never again” in today’s text. In verse 11, God says, “Never again will all living things be wiped out by the waters of a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth.” In verse 15, he says, “Never again will the waters become a flood and destroy all living things.” The reason for the covenant between God and everything alive is that the act of Judgment had a profound effect on the divine judge. He regretted that he had to destroy all those lives. Even though God, by his grace, rescued one family and enough animals to repopulate the planet, he still regretted having to kill everyone else.

God is the creator of all life, and he does not approve of reckless disregard for that life. There is a doctrine called the sanctity of human life, and I agree with it. I believe abortion is wrong because it is the taking of the life of an innocent human being who has done nothing wrong to deserve the death penalty. You can choose to rename abortion and call it reproductive rights or reproductive healthcare if you want to. But it does not change what is really happening. A human life is being destroyed. It’s not a suicide; it’s a homicide. The sanctity of human life is being disregarded.

But this passage is saying something even more comprehensive. It is saying that all life is sacred, not just all human life. God regretted the fact that he had to destroy every living creature in the flood. He determined not to do that ever again. It is wrong to kill a human being and show reckless disregard for that life. It is equally wrong to kill another creature for no reason and show reckless disregard for that life. The Noahic covenant was put into effect so that human beings would show the proper respect for all God’s creatures.

This passage gives the details of that covenant.

One of the details of the Noahic covenant was a repetition of a mandate that was part of the Adamic covenant. Verse 1 says, “Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” God still wants human beings to have children and expand their dominion over the planet.

A new mandate that is part of the Noahic covenant involves a change in the relationship between humans and animals. Human beings are allowed to take the lives of animals for the purpose of sustaining their own lives. Humans are allowed to eat animals but must not do so when the animals are still alive. Verses 3-4 say, “You may eat any moving thing that lives. As I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat with its life (that is, its blood) in it.” The word “life” in that verse is the same translated creature in 12, 15, and 16. It’s that word “soul” again. It means something breathing. Humans are not allowed to eat an animal still breathing, with its blood still coursing through its veins.

There is also a new mandate stipulated in the Noahic covenant suggested in verse 6: “Whoever sheds human blood, by other humans must his blood be shed; for in God’s image God has made humankind.” This mandate establishes human law against homicide and human government to enforce that law.

From the Noahic covenant, we know that our God holds us accountable for preserving all life—especially human life. He wants us to be agents of renewal, undoing the devastation of the flood and making this planet thrive.

This passage also gives the guarantee of the covenant.

It is a sign. The sign still exists today. Unfortunately, many are abusing this sign and using it as a symbol of pride in something they should be ashamed of. For many, the rainbow now means that human beings are free to have conjugal relations with anything they want – be it someone of the same gender or even a different species. That’s not what the sign means. The rainbow in the sky is God’s guarantee that he will never again destroy everything alive on earth by means of a universal flood. He has done that, and he will not do it again. If people commit crimes, there will be governments with authority to punish them. If people sin against God, there will be the final judgment and the lake of fire to punish that. But the rainbow is God’s promise to us that “Never again will all living things be wiped out by the waters of a flood; never again will a flood destroy the earth.” He is going to allow us to live how we want to live, and he will not intervene by retaliating against all humanity as he did in the days of Noah.

The rainbow is God’s commitment to life. It is his statement and sign of his love for us, even if we do not deserve it. We should certainly be aware that God is capable of immediate reprisal against any rebellion. We should not take the rainbow to mean that God is not capable of punishing sin. Instead, we should realize that God is giving us space and time to turn back to him—to seek him during this age of grace.

Holy Communion

In Matthew 26:28 Jesus said, “for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

The signs of the new covenant that Jesus established with his followers were the bread and cup of the communion ritual. The sign of the rainbow meant that God chose not to punish the sins of humanity with immediate retribution. The signs of the new covenant show God’s grace even more drastically. The bread and cup symbolized what Jesus did for us on the cross. He did more than delay God’s retaliation against sin. He brought about God’s forgiveness of sins. When the blood of Jesus flowed from his body while he was nailed to that cross, the flowing blood took our sins with it. We now stand as recipients of a new covenant with God. When we stand before Christ as judge, all of the world’s sins will be laid before him. But our sins will be marked “paid in full” because of the substitutionary death of Christ.

The rainbow is God’s commitment to life. So are the symbols we use today to celebrate Holy Communion. They are signs of sinners forgiven and given eternal life in the age to come. Hallelujah!

A quote from The Piney Grove Pulpit #5:

“God also said “(he) will put a new spirit within (them)” (Ezekiel 36:26b). The spirit is the breath that is inside a breathing body. The Hebrews used this breath as a metaphor for the internal life. As such, good breath inside a person suggested health, vitality and a good attitude. An evil breath (not to be confused with bad breath) meant that the body was unhealthy, dying and full of hate and bitterness.

So, when God said that he was going to put a new spirit in his people, he was talking about restoring their relationship with him through forgiveness, and that would result in health and wholeness.”

{The book has 72 pages and was published on September 15th, 2024}.