#DailyDevotion Are You Going To Listen And Do All The Lord Jesus Commands?

Deut. 4:1 “Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the just decrees that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. 2 You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you…

 

Israel is finished her punishment for grumbling against the Lord and not trusting in his promises forty years earlier. Now a new generation of Israelites are preparing to follow the Lord’s promises and commands and enter into the promise land. So now the Lord and Moses are preparing them to go in. He is reviewing with them everything he had taught their forefather whom he had taken out of Egypt.

 

The Lord has an important word for them, “Listen!” Listen, take heed, take to heart, to the statutes and decrees he has given to them through his prophet Moses. If you listen to them then do them. The Lord isn’t just whistling Dixie here. He is serious. If they do what he commands they will live and they will take possession of the land he is giving them, the land he promised to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

 

Now they are to neither add to the Lord’s commands and decrees or take away from them. This is very important. It goes back to Genesis chapters two and three. The Lord had commanded Adam to not eat of the tree of good and evil. Yet Eve when discussing this added to the Lord’s command “and don’t even touch it.” The Lord never said that. They could have made forbidden fruit pies and had a pie fight for all the Lord cared. The command was not to eat it. Yet simply by adding to the commandment, Eve left herself open to be deceived.

 

Well we know through reading of Joshua through Malachi that the Israelites and Judah did a fine job of not listening to the Lord’s commands and decrees and doing them. They did such a fine job of not listening, that at least once they had to discover the book of the law in the temple because no one had seen one in years. They followed the Lord’s commands so well he had to send the Assyrians to take Israel into exile and the Babylonians took Judah into exile as well. But even after the exile when Judah came back to Jerusalem we note in the Gospels they still didn’t listen to the Lord’s commands. They invented an Oral Torah that often times contradicted what the Lord had given them and even added and subtracted to what the Lord had given them. At the right time, the Lord came to them in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father above commanded them and us to “Listen to him.” Well after crucifying him and his resurrection, many believed and listened to him but many did not. The Lord sent the Romans to tear down the temple and send his people into exile again.

 

Now what did our Lord Jesus Christ tell us to do that we might listen to him and do what he says? 1Jn 3:23 “And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment.” These two things should encompass our lives as God’s Holy people. He gives us his grace and Spirit that we might do it.

 

Heavenly Father, grant unto us your Holy Spirit that by his grace we may listen to your son Jesus Christ, believe on his name and love one another that we may be your holy people unto life everlasting. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.