Deuteronomy 10

Look Up

Posted on by Betsy

Sunrises and sunsets in the Outer Banks of North Carolina are nothing short of spectacular. The morning glow appears from behind my westward-facing bedroom and awakens me every day with its pink enticement to arise. The evening splashes of deep oranges are just steps away from my front or back door. While my house on a point in the water is perfectly situated to easily observe these things, I have to make an effort to go and see them. The sunset view from my driveway or back dock is best, and the sunrise view requires a trip to my home office. It is funny and somewhat shameful that many days I don’t make the tiny trips to the best vantage points of these spectacular events. Caught up in work and duties, I often realize hours later that I didn’t pause for that brief moment to move my focus to where I could see God at work.

That serves as a kind of metaphor for how many of us live our lives. We are focused on responsibilities to the point that we miss what God is doing right in front of us. Our passage in Deuteronomy is a reminder to look and see God and consider what is required of us. Moses delivered this message to the people of Israel on the plains of Moab as they stood at the threshold of the Promised Land. He wanted them to shift their focus to see what God had done, and what God now wants from them.

Deuteronomy 10 (Common English Bible)

12 Now in light of all that, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God by walking in all his ways, by loving him, by serving the Lord your God with all your heart and being, 13 and by keeping the Lord’s commandments and his regulations that I’m commanding you right now. It’s for your own good! 14 Clearly, the Lord owns the sky, the highest heavens, the earth, and everything in it. 15 But the Lord adored your ancestors, loving them and choosing the descendants that followed them—you!—from all other people. That’s how things still stand now.

The Lord requires our love, service, and obedience to the Word in exchange for all the glory and promise that fill the world. The sky and heavens are right there to assure us of God’s power and presence in our lives but most of us are distracted by looking down. In our time it is because we are usually staring at our phones.

16 So circumcise your hearts and stop being so stubborn, 17 because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t take bribes. 18 He enacts justice for orphans and widows, and he loves immigrants, giving them food and clothing. 19 That means you must also love immigrants because you were immigrants in Egypt. 20 Revere the Lord your God, serve him, cling to him, swear by his name alone! 21 He is your praise, and he is your God—the one who performed these great and awesome acts that you witnessed with your very own eyes. 22 Your ancestors went down to Egypt with a total of seventy people, but now look! The Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the nighttime sky!

When we do look up, we can see God’s great and awesome acts with our own eyes. Moses focuses our attention to God’s impartial justice and love for orphans, widows, and immigrants. We are called to love and prioritize these things, too. We are instructed to cut away the exterior covering of our distracted hearts and cling to God and revere God’s name. God is our praise! This is an invitation to inner transformation that only God can bring, one which will enable us to see everything God is doing.

May we look up and see! God is right here, right now. Do you perceive it?

Dock View

Flub Ups and Do-Overs

Posted on by Betsy

Have you ever done something you instantly regretted, like missing the pop fly in the championship game, failing to get the big fish in the net, blurting out something totally inappropriate, or otherwise completely flubbing something up? I bet you wished you could get a do-over. We’ve all been there and wished that. Sometimes I think I live in the land of FlubUp. I’m actually starting to get mail there.

Today’s reading is a reminder that God always offers do-overs to us:

Deuteronomy 10:1-5 (New Revised Standard Version)

10:1 At that time the LORD said to me (Moses), “Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.” 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 

4 Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the LORD gave them to me. 5 So I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made; and there they are, as the LORD commanded me.

 So, Moses and the people of Israel get a do-over! They had already received the Ten Commandments, inscribed in stone by the very finger of God. But when Moses returned with the tablets the first time, he discovered that in his absence the people had turned back to their idols, and his brother had made a golden calf for them to worship. Talk about a flub up! In righteous anger, Moses smashed the first set of tablets, symbolizing the breaking of God’s law by his people. 

 Why did the people turn so quickly away from the God who had just brought them out of slavery in Egypt to a hunk of metal shaped like a farm animal? Because people are created for worship. And so in place of God, we will worship anything: fame, money, the easy high, flattery, the intrigue of an inappropriate relationship, possessions … all kinds of fake things.

 We are the same as our desert ancestors. When we worship all of those inappropriate things, we reject our God who has provided for our every need, if not our every want. The comparison trap of social media only serves to make us want these things even more. Every time you scroll, stop, and pinch out to see an image more clearly, you end up comparing yourself to that person or thing. Whether it’s a celebrity’s new nose, your neighbor’s idyllic vacation photos, a purse you can’t afford, or an unattainable lifestyle, you are in reality worshipping something completely unreal. We lose sight of the difference between needs and wants. We end up creating golden calves multiple times each day, and God is forgotten in our pursuits of these false idols.

 But God, in his mercy, gave the people a do-over. God is always about second chances. Even as you are reading this, God is making his way toward you, offering you a second (or third, or eightieth) chance to get right with him. That is what the cross is all about: delivering us from the slavery of sin and death and bringing us into the land of redemption and freedom. 

 The question is, who or what will you worship? Know this for sure; your golden calf may be shiny and attractive, but it brings you nothing but the hollowness and superficiality of fake gold. 

 Quit falling for it. Turn to the one true God in humility and repentance, and do it over. God will give you every second chance that you need. Thanks be to God!

Needs a Do-Over by Michelle Robertson