Tag: All your soul

52.w. Wilderness – 17.b. “When you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul”

 

 

Deu 30:1-10  “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you.  And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. And the LORD your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you. And you shall again obey the voice of the LORD and keep all his commandments that I command you today. The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, when you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Of course, this was fulfilled in part by the return of the Babylonian exiles during the times of Ezra and Nehemiah. But the ultimate fulfillment of this would await the Twentieth Century, when God would regather Israel in the Promised Land. This modern regathering is a larger, broader, more sovereign, and more miraculous restoration than that recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah. The modern restoration of Israel more accurately fulfills this promise than the return from the Babylonian exile. Today, Israel is populated from Jews from virtually every country in the world. This promise is fulfilled only in the modern restoration of Israel, not in the return from the Babylonian exile. In the days of the return from the Babylonian exile, the Jewish community was small, weak, and poor. But today, under the modern restoration of Israel, the state of Israel does indeed prosper and the promise to multiply you more than your fathers is fulfilled. Israel, as a nation, is larger, stronger, and richer than at any time in Biblical history.

 As remarkable and as prophetically meaningful the modern restoration of Israel is, it is incomplete. The spiritual dimension of the restoration has not yet been accomplished. Today Israel is a largely secular nation. There is respect for the Bible as a book of history and national identity, but there is not, and has not been, a true turning to the LORD God, particularly as a nation.  But God’s promise still stands. As the final aspect of the promise to restore Israel, God will restore them spiritually. He promises to circumcise your heart. This is an idea repeated in the promises of the New Covenant, in passages like Ezekiel 36:26-27: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Indeed, Paul promised that all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:26). Jesus said that He would not return until Israel embraced Him as Messiah: For I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!” We regard the modern restoration of Israel as a remarkable sign, and an extremely significant – but thus far only partial – fulfillment of these prophesies.

In part, these prophecies are fulfilled now in the modern restoration of Israel. But perhaps their ultimate fulfillment will happen in the millennium, when Israel has restored as a people truly turned to the LORD and His Messiah, Jesus. (Guzik)

Note how Matthew Henry (18 October 1662 – 22 June 1714) wrote on this passage compared to those who have written in the nearer future. “In this chapter is a plain intimation of the mercy God has in store for Israel in the latter days. This passage refers to the prophetic warnings of the last two chapters, which have been mainly fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and in their dispersion to the present day; and there can be no doubt that the prophetic promise contained in these verses yet remain to come to pass. The Jewish nation shall in some future period, perhaps not very distant.”

Israel became a nation May of 1948. You can see how Henry was looking forward to it happening and Guzik was looking back as it had already happened. 

We live in a time where we see historical fulfillment of God’s Word. How much closer are we to the return of Jesus Christ? Are we ready? Are we looking for His return? Are we living as those with the eyes of our hearts always on an expectant return today? 

Jesus is coming – will He find you watching and waiting for His return or find you going about the busyness of life without a thought or care for it?

Let Him find you ready with a shout of rejoicing upon your mouth at His return.

49.z. Wilderness – 14.e. ‘The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

 

Deu 6:4-5  “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

The LORD our God, the LORD is one: This is the essential truth about God. He is a person and not a vague pantheistic force. Being one, He cannot be represented by contradictory images. Since the LORD our God is one, He is not Baal, or Ashtoreth – He is the LORD God, and they are not.

i. In the mind of many Jewish people, this verse alone disqualified the New Testament teaching that Jesus is God, and the New Testament teaching of the Trinity – that there is one God, existing in three Persons. At some times and places, as Jewish synagogues said the Shema together, and when the word one (echad) was said, they loudly and strongly repeated that one word for several minutes, as if it were a rebuke to Christians who believed in the Trinity.

ii. Christians must come to a renewed understanding of the unity of God. They must appreciate the fact that the LORD is one, not three, as 1 Corinthians 8:6 says: yet for us there is one God. We worship one God, existing in three persons, not three separate gods.

iii. Yet, the statement the LORD is one certainly does not contradict the truth of the Trinity. In fact, it establishes that truth. The Hebrew word for one is echad, which speaks most literally of a compound unity, instead of using the Hebrew word yacheed, which speaks of an absolute unity or singularity (Genesis 22:2 and Psalm 25:16).

iv. The very first use of echad in the Bible is in Genesis 1:5: So the evening and the morning were the first day. Even here, we see a unity (one day) with the idea of plurality (made up of evening and morning).

· Genesis 2:24 uses echad in saying the two shall become one flesh. Again, the idea of a unity (one flesh), making a plurality (the two).

· In Exodus 26:6 and 11, the fifty gold clasps are used to hold the curtains together, so the tent would be one (echad) – a unity (one) made up of a plurality (the many parts of the tabernacle).

· In Ezekiel 37:17 the LORD tells Ezekiel to join together two sticks (prophetically representing Ephraim and Judah) into one (echad), speaking again of a unity (one stick) made up of a plurality (the two sticks).

v. There is no way that echad has the exclusive idea of an absolute singularity; the idea of One God in Three Persons fits just fine with the term echad.  (Guzik)

He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart

“For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Exodus 15:22   Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”

Exodus 16:4    Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.

Deuteronomy 8:2    And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

Deuteronomy 8:16    who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.

Judges 2:22     in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the LORD as their fathers did, or not.”

Psalms 66:10     For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.

Proverbs 17:3    The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the LORD tests hearts.

Jeremiah 9:7    Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: “Behold, I will refine them and test them,

1 Peter 1:6-7     In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,  so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Do you ever wonder why we face trials and trouble this side of eternity?  Sometimes it is because of the consequences of others, sometimes consequences of our own doing, but in all things, it is allowed by God.  God can do this to test our faith (genuineness), to refine us, to humble us, to teach us, to see if we will remain true, and to allow us to see what is in our heart.

Being tested is good for us.  When we have been through a trial we can be vengeful, hateful, hurtful, prideful…. or we learn to be humble, hopeful, reliant, and thankful to God.  We find what He means when He speaks of never leaving or forsaking us, for being our refuge, our strength, our shelter, our road and fortress, our hope and peace.

It is good to be found worthy of being tested and refined.

He is faithful

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”

 

Joe 2:12
“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?

Deuteronomy 4:29-30
But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice.

1 Samuel 7:3
And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the LORD with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”

Acts 26:20
but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.

Hosea 14:1
Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

Zechariah 1:3-4
Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD.

“Do not be like your fathers – even when I cried out to them they continued in what they were doing and rejected my pleas”  How would you feel if this is what God is telling your wife, your children, your husband about you? I am confident it is impossible to hear His cry and pleas to return when we spend no time in His word.  We will not seek Him for guidance for our day, we will forget what purpose there is in this life, we will be influenced more and more by what seems right in our own eyes or is socially accepted, we will become deaf and blind to His leading.  God knows all of this and proclaims in His word over and over again “Return to me and I will return to you,” “I will deliver you,” “You will find me,” “Search for me with your whole heart,” “Repent,” “I know your heart, thoughts, and intent,” “I love you so much that I will sacrifice my son for you,” “I will give you peace,” “I will give your strength,” “I will be your rock,” “I will guide your path,” and so many more words of warning and blessing.  Be the father, mother, son, daughter that is spoken of by God as one who did right in His eyes.  Be the one who is a light in the darkness.  Be the one who is able to rightly proclaim God’s word.  Spend time in His word today.