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Deuteronomy 15 | Psalm 102 | Isaiah 42 | Revelation 12

Toward the end of yesterday’s meditation on Deuteronomy 14, we talked about how the tithes of Israel were meant to take care of the needy as well as the Levites, who did not have their own inheritance but depended on the tithes of other Israelites for their income. In today’s reading, we get a little clearer picture of the kind of generosity God is teaching his people to live out.

In Deuteronomy 15, Moses establishes a Year of Release in the life of Israel. Every seventh year, Israelites would forgive their fellow Israelites for any outstanding debts they owed. This provision did not apply to foreigners in their midst (Deut. 15:3), but fellow Israelites would have their entire debt cancelled, no matter how large the sum.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that all loans had a seven-year window for repayment. The seventh year was a fixed calendar for the entire nation, so some loans might be forgiven after a very short time. Moses gave a clear warning to Israel, though, that to ignore the needs of their needy brothers only because the Year of Release was coming was sin (Deut. 15:9). The Year of Release was for the benefit of the poor, not for the profit of the rich.

On the other hand, any slave who wished to stay with his master when the Year of Release came around could choose to do so, receiving a mark on his ear to become his master’s slave for life (Deut. 15:15–17). Although this seems odd to us, slavery in the Bible was very different from the slavery that was practiced in America. In the ancient world, most slaves became slaves because they had gone to work for their masters to pay off debts, not because they were kidnapped and stolen from their homes by slave traders.

But if your slave did wish to go during the Year of Release, you were not to release him empty-handed. Instead, you were commanded to “furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him” (Deut. 15:14).

In this way, Moses acknowledges that while “there will never cease to be poor in the land” (Deut. 15:11), at the same time “there will be no poor among you” (Deut. 15:4)—that is, there will be no permanent class of poor people. The desire was always to see those people restored to flourishing.

Seen together, these regulations form a powerful picture of the gospel. The one who possesses all wealth and who holds authority to command the storm to be still nevertheless forgave our debts and even submitted to become a slave for us (Phil. 2:7), pierced through so that we might go free.

Behold the generosity of our God.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 13–14 | Psalms 99, 100, & 101 | Isaiah 41 | Revelation 11

Deuteronomy 14 changes the way that we see our offerings to God. Sadly, we can too easily come to look at the act of bringing our offerings to God as a kind of a tax, where we send off our checks to some impersonal government in a distant land so that they will do whatever they want with it without any regard to what would be best for us, the tax-payers.

But not so with Yahweh. The Israelites were commanded to bring a tithe (10 percent) of everything they grew in their fields annually as an offering to Yahweh in the place that he would choose (Deut. 14:22–23). Obviously, they couldn’t send a check through the mail, and they couldn’t electronically file their tithe, so they were commanded to bring it personally to that place during the festivals.

Now, we read about the festivals and the other sacrifices that were required at those festivals in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28–29, and we will read more again in Deuteronomy 16. The unique material in Deuteronomy 14, though, is that Moses here makes a provision for the people who lived too far away to bring their sacrifice physically to the festival. For those people, Moses explained that they were supposed to trade their crop for money and then take that money (rather than the animals, grains, and other cumbersome sacrifices) to the place of God’s choosing, where they could spend it on whatever they needed to throw a huge party—anything at all, including rich meats, wine, and strong drinks (Deut. 14:24–26).

That’s right—Yahweh actually commands his people to spend their tithe (under some circumstances) on a big party with plenty of alcohol if they are not able to get their sacrifices to the festival. Does that sound like a greedy God?

But at the same time, we aren’t supposed to think that Yahweh was commanding wild, out-of-control, self-centered partying. Feasting and joy, yes; debauchery, no. The whole point of all of this is that God’s people would “eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household” (Deut. 14:26). Yahweh never wanted to grab up the tithes of his people out of greed. Instead, he wants to rejoice in the presence of his people.

And we should not overlook the fact that Yahweh also commanded his people to care for the poor in their midst, including the Levites (who had no property inheritance but depended on the offerings of the other Israelites), sojourners, orphans, and widows in their towns (Deut. 14:27–29).

Deuteronomy 14, then, isn’t teaching us to skip giving to our church and spend our offerings on our own, selfish pleasure; quite the opposite, in fact. Here, we are learning how to give with joy while meeting the needs of those around us.

Why do you give?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 12 | Psalms 97–98 | Isaiah 40 | Revelation 10

Moses reveals in Deuteronomy 12:8–9 that Israel’s informality in their worship would eventually need to change: “You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the LORD your God is giving to you.” Here, Moses is acknowledging that there was chaos in Israel’s worship during the days of their wilderness wanderings, so that it was customary for the Israelites to worship in different places.

In anticipation of the day when Israel would settle into the Promised Land, Moses gives explicit instructions in Deuteronomy 12 that the Israelites should destroy the high places and altars of foreign gods (Deut. 12:1–4) and that the Israelites should under no circumstances inquire into the worship practices of the nations whom Yahweh was driving out of the land (Deut. 12:29–31).

Ultimately, Israel ignored everything Moses said here. Instead, they failed to destroy the high places where the other nations worshiped and they actively inquired into the practices of those nations. The tragedy of Deuteronomy 12:8 is that the phrase of “everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes” becomes the theme of the book of Judges (e.g., Judg. 21:25) to describe how bad things had become in Israel.

But why? From our perspective, it seems crazy that Israel would succumb to worshiping the false gods of other nations after Yahweh had acted powerfully to lead them out of the house of Egypt. Why would Israel forsake their redeemer?

In fact, we struggle with the exact same problem. Israel’s error wasn’t so much that they were legitimately awed by the foreign gods but that they became attracted to the standards of their surrounding cultures. This was the reason Yahweh instructed them to destroy every remnant of the worship of these foreign nations: so that they wouldn’t stumble into false religions—especially the kind that led people to burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods (Deut. 12:31).

And still today, the church struggles with the same problem—not that we are attracted to ancient near eastern paganism, but that we wrestle with the same desires to make ourselves seem relevant and respectable in the eyes of the world.

We must fight to remember the words of the Apostle John: “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20–21). That is, keep yourself from anything that would distract you from the one who is true God and eternal life, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 11 | Psalms 95–96 | Isaiah 39 | Revelation 9

By the time of Jesus, the signs and frontlets that Moses wanted to see bound to the eyes and hands of Israelites (Deut. 11:18) had largely become an outward show of hypocrisy. Jesus explicitly condemned the Pharisees for the way they wore their signs and frontlets (in Greek, “phylacteries”) to gain attention, saying, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long” (Matt. 23:5). The Pharisees no longer used their phylacteries as a tool for keeping the words of the living God front and center in their lives but for showing off their own righteousness to everyone else.

But that doesn’t mean the original intent for the frontlets was bad or poorly conceived. Moses wants desperately to avoid a situation where the Israelites forget the great works that Yahweh has done for them, turning instead to worship the false gods that the nations living in the land of Canaan up to this point have served (Deut. 10:16–17).

Not only did Yahweh bring his people out of the land of Egypt through signs and wonders, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, but he brought them through the Red Sea as they were pursued by Egyptians (Deut. 11:2–4). Even more, Yahweh swallowed up Dathan and Abiram (Deut. 11:6), who challenged Moses’s leadership along with Korah (Num. 16). And now Yahweh is about to lead his people into a land so fertile that they will not need to irrigate it, as they had done in Egypt, but a land flowing with milk and honey that Yahweh himself tends as a master gardener (Deut. 11:8–12).

So, Moses commands the people to remind themselves the story of what Yahweh has done for them again and again. They should bind the story physically to their bodies, teach the story to their children, and write the story on their doorposts and gates (Deut. 11:18–20).

And in this way, God’s people would “therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul” (Deut. 11:18). All of these physical reminders were for the sake of sinking the story deeply into their hearts and souls. Like circumcision, these frontlets, doorpost inscriptions, and gate writings were all physical signs pointing to a deeper spiritual reality, as we talked about in yesterday’s meditation.

Can you be a hypocrite with a phylactery? Absolutely.

But do we need physical reminders to remind us again and again of spiritual realities? Absolutely. This is why Jesus gave us baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as well as membership in local congregations of believers—to remind us again and again of the story.

Have these signs, then, become sources of hypocrisy for you, or do you cherish them as special resources for bringing you repeatedly back into the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 10 | Psalm 94 | Isaiah 38 | Revelation 8

When God commanded in Genesis 17 that every male in the household of Abraham be circumcised, he never intended for circumcision to be merely a physical act. Instead, physical circumcision—the cutting away of the flesh—always pointed to a larger, spiritual reality. In Deuteronomy 10, we get our first glimpse of God’s overarching purpose for circumcision.

In this passage, Moses pleads with the Israelites: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (Deut. 10:16). Circumcision, Moses explains, gives us a picture of what it looks like when the stubbornness of our hearts is cut away. When our hearts are circumcised, we are able not only to love God with all of our hearts and souls (Deut. 10:12–13) but also to love our neighbor as ourselves—especially our most vulnerable neighbors: the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner (Deut. 10:18–19).

What’s so fascinating about this story is the fact that Moses was speaking to a group of people who had not been physically circumcised. Deuteronomy is the final sermon Moses gives to Israel before he dies (Deut. 34:1–8). Under Moses’s successor Joshua, the LORD commands that the whole nation be circumcised, since no one who had been born during Israel’s wilderness wanderings had been circumcised (Josh. 5:2–9). In other words, the people listening to Moses’s sermon here were circumcised neither in their flesh nor in their hearts.

Circumcision was a non-negotiable part of being the covenant people of God, as Moses himself had learned when Yahweh approached Moses to put him to death for failing to circumcise his own son (Ex. 4:24–26). But for Moses, physical circumcision was never the chief priority, since circumcision was merely the sign—circumcision was not the ultimate reality that the sign pointed to. So, with his dying words, Moses begged Israel to circumcise their hearts so that they might not stubbornly disobey the LORD any longer.

What, then, does circumcision point toward? In the New Testament, we get a clearer explanation: physical circumcision points to the reality of heart circumcision, which corresponds to the theological idea of regeneration, or new birth in Christ.1 Through the redemption of Christ, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives, God circumcises our hearts by giving us new life through the gospel. So, in Romans 2:25–29, Paul says that the true Jews are those whose circumcision is spiritual, the inward work of the Spirit, and in Colossians 2:11–15, Paul says that we received the circumcision of Christ through burial and resurrection with Christ in baptism.

The larger point behind all this, then, is that while Christianity has outward signs (e.g., baptism, the Lord’s Supper, formal church membership), the non-negotiable feature of Christianity is an inward work of the Holy Spirit. By the mercy of God, therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your heart.

1 James M. Hamilton, Jr., God’s Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, NACSBT (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2006), 2–3.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 9 | Psalms 92–93 | Isaiah 37 | Revelation 7

In Deuteronomy 9, Moses shatters the final false belief that Israel might hold onto about why Yahweh was removing the inhabitants of the land of Canaan in order to give Israel the land as a possession. This has nothing to do, Moses assures Israel, with their righteousness. So, Moses warns them, “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you … and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Deut. 9:4–5). What, then, should we learn from this?

First, we must never forget that we too share in the guilt shared by the entire human race. It isn’t that sin clings merely to other people but that we bear the curse of sin in our own bodies. And just as the Israelites committed the abominable sin of worshiping the golden calf after Yahweh had taken them to be his people and ratified his covenant with them at Mount Sinai (Deut. 9:24–39), so we also should admit that we feel our struggle against sin all the more after we come to faith in Christ. Rather than boasting, we ought to cry out in anguish with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24).

Second, Deuteronomy 9 proclaims to us again the sheer graciousness of the gospel. Yahweh fulfilled his promises to Israel by bringing them into the Promised Land—not because of their own righteousness, but because of the promise he had sworn to Israel’s fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. God saved Israel not because Israel was faithful but because God was faithful.

In the same way, we also were helplessly lost, trapped, and captured under the curse of sin and death, justly deserving of God’s wrath and displeasure, but God did not allow us to remain there. Out of nothing more than his free grace, love, and mercy, he offered up as a sacrifice his own Son, who was driven out of the land of the living as though he had provoked his Father to wrath.

The Apostle Paul announces this gospel in Romans 3:23–25: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” Then, as if to call our minds back to Deuteronomy 9, he asks (and answers) this burning question in Romans 3:27: “Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.”

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 8 | Psalm 91 | Isaiah 36 | Revelation 6

Deuteronomy 7–9 contains three separate reflections on the scandal of particularity, the subject we discussed in our meditation from Deuteronomy 4. In these chapters, Moses raises three possibilities to explain why Israel might be receiving the blessings of Yahweh—including the full wealth and prosperity of the Promised Land—and then he knocks each one down. It is neither because of Israel’s size (Deut. 7) nor because of their righteousness (Deut. 9) that Yahweh has lavished his love upon them, and here in Deuteronomy 8, Moses explains that it is also not Israel’s strength that will cause them to take possession of the land of Canaan.

So, Deuteronomy 8 begins with a plea for Israel to remember Yahweh and all that Yahweh had done for them. Moses reminds Israel that, even where the wilderness had humbled Israel, Yahweh nevertheless fed his people with manna and clothed his people in garments that did not wear out through the entire forty years that they waited to enter into Canaan (Deut. 8:1–5). Yahweh did this, Moses explains, to test Israel to see whether they would keep his commandments (Deut. 8:2) and to teach them that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut. 8:3).

But Moses also understands that Israel will likely forget these lessons that they learned through suffering in the wilderness, so he issues this stern warning: “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth’” (Deut. 8:17). If Israel gives in to allowing this arrogance to fester in their hearts, Moses reasons, they will be drawn away to serve and worship false gods instead of the living God who did give them these blessings.

As we look upon our own lives, it is remarkably easy to believe that we have gained for ourselves all that we possess rather than remembering that all good gifts come down from the Father of lights (James 1:16–17). Even the great King Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty ruler of Babylon, could not take credit for building his empire—and when he tried to do so, God struck him down to live as an animal with the beasts of the field because of his pride (Dan. 4:28–37).

Rather than bragging about our achievements with pride, we ought to ask, like Paul, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). Examine your heart—do you give all glory to the God who graciously gives us all things along with the most precious gift of all, his Son Jesus Christ? Or do you secretly credit your own strength, abilities, or intelligence for your achievements and possessions in life?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 7 | Psalm 90 | Isaiah 35 | Revelation 5

Deuteronomy 7 features the second-best circular logic in the Bible. Let me explain what I mean by pointing out Deuteronomy 7:6, where Moses reminds Israel that “you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”

At this point, Moses pauses to ask himself a question: Why does the LORD love Israel? This question seems to be what Moses is addressing in the next verse: “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples” (Deut. 7:7). Bigger would typically be considered better, but Israel’s size was not the reason that the LORD loves Israel, since Israel was not a large nation.

Why, then, does the LORD love Israel?

The answer comes in Deuteronomy 7:8: “…but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

Did you catch the reason why the LORD loves Israel? “It is because the LORD loves you.” God loves his people because he loves them. The reason has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with God’s rich, free, gracious love that he pours out on us. Yahweh’s love is based on magnificent circular logic.

Compare Deuteronomy 7 to the most beautiful circular logic in the Bible, which is found in Ephesians 2. There, Paul begins his letter by cataloging the lavish grace that God has poured out upon his people: “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:4b–5).

But why? Why did God bless us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:3) or choose us from before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) or redeem us through the blood of Jesus (Eph. 1:7) or seal to us the down-payment of our inheritance with the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13–14)? Why did God make us alive together with Christ, raising us up to be seated with him in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:5–6)?

The answer is simple: God did it all “because of the great love with which he loved us” (Eph. 2:4). In other words, he lavished his love upon us because he loved us.

You did not earn God’s love, and you could not earn God’s love. Give thanks to God today for the fact that he loves you because he loves you.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 6 | Psalm 89 | Isaiah 34 | Revelation 4

Deuteronomy 6 is one of the most important chapters in the Old Testament, not least for the fact that Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 as one of the two greatest commandments (“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”; see Matt. 22:37, Mark 12:29–30, Luke 10:27). But the main focus of Deuteronomy 6—and our focus for today’s meditation—is Moses’s insistence that we pass down these profound truths about Yahweh to our children.

There is a great danger that Yahweh’s people will forget about him. In fact, the danger grows greater as Yahweh blesses his people with great and good cities, houses full of good things, cisterns with clean water, and vineyards and olive trees—especially, as in the case of Israel, when God’s people were not the ones to build, fill, dig, or plant these good things (Deut. 6:10–12).

Through much of Deuteronomy, then, Moses is pleading with Israel not simply not to forget Yahweh, but also to remember Yahweh proactively. Moses urges Israel to teach Yahweh’s commandments diligently to their children not only so that their children will remember Yahweh but also so that they themselves will remember Yahweh (Deut. 6:7).

And Moses even tells us explicitly what he means by “diligently”: “[You] shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:6–9). Everywhere you go, and in everything you do, teach your children the commandments of Yahweh.

But don’t think that by “commandments,” Moses is talking about dry, outdated rules. Instead, Moses explains that when their sons ask, “What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statues and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?” (Deut. 6:20), they are to teach their children the story of how Yahweh redeemed Israel out of Egypt, to bring them into their inheritance in righteousness (Deut. 6:21–25).

The story of God’s redemption is the meaning of the rules. The rules teach us how to live in light of God’s gracious redemption.

So, how are we teaching our children the story of our own redemption? How are we explaining to them that, although we were once slaves to sin, Jesus died to redeem us and with great signs and wonders rose again from the dead? How are we whetting their appetite for the promised new heavens and new earth?

By passing the story of Christ on to our children, both we and our children learn to love the LORD our God with all of our hearts, souls, and might.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 5 | Psalm 88 | Isaiah 33 | Revelation 3

In Deuteronomy 5, Moses does not simply repeat the Ten Commandments, but he also reminds Israel of what their response had been at the time when Yahweh had given them the Ten Commandments: fear and reverence. When Yahweh appeared at Mount Sinai to give his law, Israel was terrified that they would be struck down by Yahweh’s holiness for their sinfulness, so they pleaded for a mediator (Deut. 5:24–27).

Yahweh, for his part, is pleased with the response of his people: “I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a mind as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!” (Deut. 5:28–29). Notice the first thing that Yahweh approves of in Israel’s response: that they feared him when he revealed his law to them.

We might think that fear of the Lord is a bad thing. Shouldn’t the goal be to love God and to feel close to him? Doesn’t God want to make us feel good rather than bad? Not at all—or, at least, not at first.

Eugene Peterson offers a helpful insight into what it means to speak of the fear of the Lord in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places:

[Fear-of-the-Lord] means far more and other than simply being scared. But, and here’s the thing, it includes all the emotions that accompany being scared—the disorientation, the not-knowing what is going to happen to me, the realization that there is far more here than I had any idea of. And the “more and other” is God. When that happens, we begin to get in on the fear-of-the-Lord.1

This story in Deuteronomy 5 is such a remarkable picture of how the gospel works in our lives. When God, through his Spirit, brings us to recognize the full extent of our guilt before his holiness, we are undone—disoriented, not knowing what will happen to us, and realizing that we have spent our lives trifling with something far greater than we had ever imagined.

And only once we are at that point, undone in the presence of Yahweh’s holiness, will Yahweh’s Spirit cast light on our mediator—a better mediator than even Moses had been. Then, the Spirit urges us to flee to Christ for refuge, trusting in his shed blood to atone for our sins and for his righteousness to cover us so that we might escape the wrath to come (Matt. 3:7).

Today, lift your head from the distractions of this world to gaze upon the terrifying holiness of God—not so that you may simply become scared, but so that you may plead for the perfect mediation of Jesus Christ.

1 Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 122.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.