26:1 We frequently mistake this idea of idol worship as being an antiquated practice. Yet in our own time frame, we have, as a society, created our own idols. Iterations of wealth, fame and power have diverted our social conscious from the Will and Way of God. If He is not our director, direction and destination, something else is standing in His place(s). And whatever it is that stands in what is rightfully His place is not leading us on the right path. If He is not in those places, we are walking away from our divinely ordained purpose.
In order to examine and determine if we have placed Him in those three places, we have to look at the details of our life, soul, heart, words, thoughts and actions. It is easy for us to flippantly believe that we have our values shorted out... it is another thing entirely to prove and exemplify that we do. Prove to Him and to ourselves. What keeps us up at night? Are we worried about serving Him better or about serving ourselves? Are the thinking about what we want or are we being grateful for having what we need?
If we tie our happiness to anything but Him... that is idol worship. The only thing we need to be focused on is Him. He's going to lead us to exactly where we need to be. To where we can be the most effective here on earth... where we can make the most profound improvements here.
26:2 We are meant to keep His rest... and to revere Him as our sanctuary. He is the only rest that is permanent. He is the only sanctuary that is safe. He does not command us to keep these commandments because He's bossy... He's actually a relaxed parent; He doles freedom out abundantly. He encourages us to keep Him as our rest and sanctuary because only He knows how to invigorate us during that time and in that space. And He knows that we need His invigoration. We are so susceptible to weariness: we often do not understand our journey here and we frequently have no idea how to traverse it. He knows how to disintegrate that weariness and replace it with hope and courage.
26:3-4 Read this verse in a figurative sense: God is going to provide the materials we need to produce. He is going to ensure that during a time of labor (life here on earth) we have the materials and equipment to come out of this season and into a season of abundant harvest. We are going to create and produce because He enables us. John 15:5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." God has plans for you to bear fruit. What you produce on the earth matters. Let what you produce be from Him, pure and abundant and good.
26:5 He is going to fill us... with overflow! He loves us and wants to provide for us. He never leaves us alone with scraps. He is always present and offering an overflow of His love and safety. Nothing can permeate the sphere of protection He places around us... not evil, not scarcity, nothing... no-thing, no-person.
26:6 His protection is complete: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent! Lets look at these definitions of Who our creator, our Father is; let's look at these three traits of His that are constantly available to us and working for us as individuals:
- Omniscient: Knowing everything. Well, that's convenient. God knows so much that we (limited beings that we are) cannot even understand the full scope of that definition. He knows thing we cannot even see! He knows the details of things we cannot even conceive of. He knows all that is inside of us and outside of us. He contemporaneously knows all things! He knows past, present and future. He knows what we need and what we want. He knows. Everything. He is never blindsided. He isn't missing anything. He's planning for everything. He happily carries all of our burdens. They are not burdens to Him. He always sees a way out and a way through. He knows how to lead... let Him do what He is best at: loving, leading and knowing.
- Omnipotent: Unlimited power, able to do anything. Our God cannot be challenged: not by any thing, man, entity or force. He has complete control. He gives us a lot of freedom here on earth because He is patient and generous... because He knows that we are children in need of schooling (earth = our hands-on-classroom). Yet our freedom is still under His power. It is given and maintained by Him. Its length and nature has been decided by Him. Give Him permission to implement this perfect power in your life. He has given us the generous freedom and opportunity to choose... choose Him. Let yourself be absorbed by His power.
- Omnipresent: Widely, constantly encountered; widespread. He is present in all places and spaces. He is at our beck and call no matter where we are or where we go. He is present and listening. He's ready and willing. He's competent and able. In every place! We do not have to be somewhere specific to access Him. He is around and within us. Emmanuel: God with us, Matthew 1:23.
26:7-8 You and God are a majority. No number of enemies or worries or fears can overtake you if you recruit God, if you become an army with God. Your enemies do not just back down... they flee you! God's protection and power is fierce. Claim your Inheritance, He is holding out His hand.
26:9 God gives us the reason why we do not have to fear or worry about any enemy or circumstance: For I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm My covenant with you. What more could we possibly need? God has promised to fulfill us. He has promised to reaffirm His blessings. By Him we will be made fruitful... we will be continuously loved. He's going to multiply our harvest.
26:10 God constantly, consistently provides. He replaces one blessing with another and another. As God taught the children of Israel in the wilderness... eat now, take what is provided and do not worry about what is next. God is next. God is always next when we are rooted in faith. We do not have to worry about what is coming or what is around the corner because we have placed our omnipresent God there! He is in every space -- seen and unseen! God was, God is, God will be. He's in every place.
26:11 God has offered to reside within us... the most accessible place. He has promised to love us from within us. We would not have even known to ask that of Him... yet there it is: He has offered to be our everything. Our provider. Our home. An omniscient lodger in our hearts and omnipotent lodger souls.
One of the most beautiful declarations God has made to us is in this verse: He will not abhor us. As a species, we have done a lot of abhor-able things. Deplorable things. Even on an individual level, our mistakes could have been enough for Him to turn His heart away from us... but He never does! And He promises that He never will. He's always going to be present and available and loving.
26:12 The capabilities of His omnipresence are written here: He promises to walk among us. From the divine place that He is... He offers to walk with us here... in this imperfect and challenging place. He does not have to do that; He chooses to do that. He can be in this place with us. He can be within us. All He waits for is an invitation.
26:13 God has broken the chains of the things that try to imprison us. As God's children we are slaves to NO-thing and NO-person. God even frees us from ourselves. From our mistakes. From our shortcomings. From our circumstances (even if we caused them ourselves). He frees us and then makes us stronger and smarter and more capable. He enables us to walk upright: in Him, we no longer have to walk hunched over in self-consciousness or brokenness or in inferiority. To Him we are important and purposeful, beautiful and wise. He builds up our best characteristics and fixes our worst.
26:14-17 Yet if we reject Him... if we become oppressors, we can expect to stumble and fail. If we become oppressors, we face all of those powerful characteristics of His we just talked about. He cannot be defeated. He's constantly busy clearing oppressors OUT of the way. Diminishing them. Disintegrating their works. His wrath is poured out over injustice. That should be a comfort to you.
26:18-20 As our Parent, God knows how to right our wrongs. He knows how to knock us down out of arrogance and into a state of humility. 1 Peter 5:10 But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.
26:21-22 Without God's protection, we are vulnerable to the harsh reality of life here. God is the only complete protection that we have... He's also the only protection that we need. Opposing Him is to reject that protection. To reject Him is to choose trial and tribulation... not as a punishment but as a subsequent reality.
26:23 Allow God to reform you. When a bone heals improperly, the only way to fix it is to reform it. The process may be painful but the result is perfection. Health. Regrowth can be difficult but through God is is worthwhile. When we walk contrary to His Way and His will, we break our figurative bones. Come back to Him and be healed. Let Him reset every brokenness inside of you.
26:24 God tries to make this simple for us. When we leave His side... we become His opposition. We just learned that nothing that opposes Him prevails. Think of it this way: If God is the ocean, powerful and abundant and widespread... our best decision would be to become a part of that force. If we decide to oppose the ocean's force instead... then we have to constantly battle it.
26:25-26 Only God knows how to fill us. Not only does He provide, He provides precisely what our souls need. We often do not even know what we need. We think we know what we want... we rarely know what we need, Romans 8:26. Our Father knows what we need. Relent to His love. Give Him permission in every crevice of your life and soul -- because as soon as He is welcomed into those places, He's going to nourish those places.
This is something God reaffirms in other places in the Bible: when people try to fill themselves with material things and selfish wants they are never properly filled or satisfied. Micah 6:14, Joel 20:26 and take a closer look at Isaiah 55:2 "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance."
God implores us to listen carefully to Him: He knows what we need. He knows how to fill every need we have. Notice the word He chooses to use... abundance. He fills us to the point of abundance! He gives us more than we even need because He is that good. That capable. That generous.
This is something God reaffirms in other places in the Bible: when people try to fill themselves with material things and selfish wants they are never properly filled or satisfied. Micah 6:14, Joel 20:26 and take a closer look at Isaiah 55:2 "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in abundance."
God implores us to listen carefully to Him: He knows what we need. He knows how to fill every need we have. Notice the word He chooses to use... abundance. He fills us to the point of abundance! He gives us more than we even need because He is that good. That capable. That generous.
26:27-35 This is a warning from God. To oppose Him is to choose to walk a difficult life. To abandon Him is to cut oneself off from all of His blessings and provisions. Nothing prospers outside of His sphere. He is THE life-giver. Away from Him, life withers. This diatribe should come as a comfort to us... for it is God's words to our enemies. It is a message to those who oppose Him and we certainly never would want to choose that path.
26:36-39 God completely destabilizes evil. After we complete this schooling that is life on earth, that which is evil is destroyed. Forever. For good. For goodness to prosper evil is destroyed. And even here on earth, when one of His children calls out to Him, He immediately appears and begins to orchestrate their rescue.
26:40-43 God finishes this emphatic declaration against evil with the beautiful purity that is His default, inherent self: if we remember Him... He will remember us. No matter how far we strayed... no matter for how long we've strayed. If we turn our focus back to Him. If we give Him our heart and our love and our soul to be reformed, He will be present.
He will remember His covenant. He will remember the land. Every place we plant our feet or rest our body will be under His care once again. Our Father posses an extraordinary amount of patience, forgiveness, mercy and love. Even if we go AGAINST Him... He welcomes us back. We learn this most emphatically from the apostle Paul. In Acts 22 Paul owns up to all of his gruesome mistakes against God and God's children.
Yet Paul turned His heart to God and allowed God to reform Him. Not only did God forgive Paul... and deeply love Paul... He also gave Him a divine purpose! God allowed Paul to personally pour the foundation of this faith -- Christianity would not have been the same without his work and faith. Paul went boldly, fiercely against Christianity... but God welcomed Him back.
26:44-45 One of the most gentle and generous things God steadfastly does is claim us. He says it here: I am the LORD their (our) God. Mess and all, He claims us. No matter how messy we get. No matter how ugly we act. He gives us the right and truth to declare that we are His.
There is so much beauty in that. We are that awkward, embarrassing kid with the braces and the acne and the bad attitude... we're that person with the outdated dance moves everyone is laughing at... the kid who misses the basket and loses the game, the one who backs into a pole... and God looks at us in a room, a world full of people and declares: that's my baby. That's my girl. That's my boy. He's the proud Parent who never gives up on us. Who never loves less and always loves more. He loves our quirks. He empathizes with our hurts. He claims all of us. Every atom of our body. Every energy within our soul. He claims. It's His. We are His.
What is so tremendously beautiful is that He loves us whether we deserve it or not. The depths His kindness are staggeringly generous. We do not have to earn His love... but in order to have it, to claim it, we have to choose Him. Choose His way of life.
26:46 These are the declarations God made to our ancestors... and promised to offer to their posterity (that's us!). Claim Him as emphatically as He claims us. These promises are offered to you by God... welcome these blessings into your life.
