Deuteronomy 7:1-26
7:1 Moses is preparing the children of Israel for God's next movements, the unfolding and deliverance of His promises. The children of Israel are going to prevail against stronger and larger armies because of God. Moses wants them to remember that their victory will be the fulfillment of a promised gift from God. To retain the gift, the children of Israel will need to be faithful to God.
7:2 When the Lord diminishes and then eliminates the enemy, the children of Israel will need to keep their eyes, hearts and lifestyles fixed on God. God is clearing these peoples out of their lands because of their corruption, Deuteronomy 9:5. If the children Israel wish to continue to be separate from the people God is destroying, they need to remain on His side.
God's blessings fall in a specific sphere. A sphere of compassion, justice, and truth. To step outside of those things is to step outside of the sphere into which His blessings so expertly fall.
7:3 Moses instructs the children of Israel to remain separate from these peoples; they must not marry with them. The reason is because their faith will be tainted by the corruption. After all, who we choose to spend our time with impacts who we are and how we act.
Moses pleads with the children of Israel to spend their time with God. If they (we) live to emulate Him, we will always be striving to be kinder, truer, more faithful to our values. We live in a society where media and the thoughts and actions of others are constantly being pushed toward and around us. Social media, news media, commercial/advertisement media... all of it and more is influencing us. If we filter those things and ideas coming at us through our faith, we will remain tethered to God.
The point is that our lives are not so different from the lives of the children of Israel. The outside-influences might look different and come in different forms but they are all pushing the same agenda -- and not usually one that is godly. Our world is centered around greed and vanity and power. God is the only entity constantly reminding us that humility and compassion are more advantageous than what the world values.
7:4-5 Because these outside-influences chip away our faith so slowly, we begin to idolize them rather than God. We do not realize their power over us. And so Moses' advice is for us to eliminate anything outside of God from our lives as onset. We are meant to cut off those sources as soon as we enter a place or state of mind.
7:6-7 Moses administers a deep dose of humility: God's love for us is immeasurable, magnanimous. But the reason He loves us is not because we are awesome... but because we are puny. We humans are rag-tag bunch: vulnerable, fickle, fallible, needy. But, fortunate for us, God's love is the greatest for the simplest.
Psalm 144:3-4
Lord, what are human beings that you care for them,mere mortals that you think of them?4 They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.
It would be so easy to overlook us. It would be so easy to examine a small amount of humanity's time on earth and to decide that we are more trouble than we are worth.
Psalm 103:13-14
As a father pities his children,So the Lord pities those who love Him.For He knows our frame;He remembers that we are dust.
7:8 God's love for us is so tender, so gentle because He knows that we are essentially useless if left to our own devices. We can do all things through Him, Philippians 4:13, but so little through ourselves. Therefore He picks up the slack (and there's a lot of it). He chose us because He knew that only He could fill our many needs.
God chose us, first by choosing the children of Israel: a small, enslaved group in a foreign city with no home. He chose the rejects. God chose those who rejected the world and who were rejected by the world because they chose Him, His way. And those who choose to serve the Lord are served by Him like kings and queens.
With humility we must always remember that God recruited us a rejects. He pulled us up out of literal and figurative slavery and orphanage, squalor and ignorance. God chose each one of us not because we are awesome but because we the opposite... because even in our lowest state, He sees the highest potential. We must always remember God's incredible compassion; and that is what Moses is imploring us to do when He says...
7:9-11
9 “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.Keep the commandments, the life-guidelines God has established because they are the cobblestones of the path that leads directly to Him.
7:12 In essence, Moses was priming each individual human to develop and maintain a personal relationship with God. Moses served as an intermediary between humanity and God because humans were not ready for the responsibility (albeit a blessed one).
If we consistently do these three things, our covenant with God will bless our lives all of our days:
- Listen: the Lord speaks to each of us in unique ways tailored to our specific personality. Part of listening is to hear, with trust and perception, this Bible He had written for us. The Bible is packed full of His wisdom and reassurance.
- Keep: We must keep in our hearts, minds, souls and interactions the wisdom we garner from our God. Our relationship with God should be our most treasured possession.
- Do: We must do the works of His will because faith without works is dead, James 2:14. These are not just words on a page, the Bible teaches us a lifestyle to live. Do! We are called to produce good fruits. We are meant to manifest good, justice, compassion and truth on the earth.
7:13 Faith is the channel and the landing pad of faith's blessings. Through our faith, God is able to deliver these things Moses speaks of: love, protection, abundance, posterity. God is able to bless our bodies, our land, our home, our livelihood, our family.
7:14-16 An individual rooted in God lives a very different life than someone who does not. A child of God has an informed perspective and resilient soul. The more we trust Him, the wider our channel of faith, the bigger the blessings that are able to come trouble. God places protective barriers around His faithful child; because of God, the earth is ours to prosper and abound on while we are here.
7:17 A faithful child of God never has to worry about things which seem impossible. All the world, all the earth and all of humanity bend to the will of God.
7:18-24 Moses explains to us that God has eliminated our need to fear. He can handle every battle deftly and with ease. Just as He did for the children of Israel, God pulls us out of situations we need rescue from. He drives our enemies out of our lives. We do not need to see the way out because God always does. If there is no way out, He creates one. And like Jehoshaphat, 2 Chronicles 20:2, when we simple feel defeated and do not know what to do... we can always do this: fix our eyes on God. For we so often do not know what to do... but our eyes are on You, God. God looks into our eyes and responds immediately with compassion and a plan.
7:25-26 So remove all of the clutter from your life, anything that opposes God or taints your faith... because again: An individual rooted in God lives a very different life than someone who does not.
