#DailyDevotion How Does The LORD Want You To Fear, Walk, Love, & Serve Him?
Deut. 10:12-21 12“And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, walk in all His ways, love Him, and serve the LORD your God with all your mind and all your heart, 13to keep the LORD’s commandments and laws that I today order you to keep for your own good? 14Remember, to the LORD belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth and everything in it, 15but the LORD set His heart on your fathers, loved them, and chose you, their descendants, from all the people, as it is today.”
The word fear in Hebrew has a number of connotations. The most obvious one is to mean something like be terrified. The connotation here though with the list of verbs that follow (walk, love, serve) carries the meaning of respect and trust. So Moses tells the Israelites the LORD their God wants them to fear the LORD, walk in all his ways, love him, and serve him with all your mind and with all your heart and to keep the commandments. Now all of these verbs fear, walk, love, serve, keep are kind of synonymous here. They are different ways of talking about the response the LORD wanted the Israelites to have because he had delivered them from the Egyptians and was going to be giving them the land of Canaan. He was exterminating the Canaanites through the Israelites because of their great sins against him and telling them how to live there so they do not end up with the same punishment as them. These ways to fear, love, and serve the LORD were a two-fold purpose. The first is to distinguish them from all the other nations of the world. The second was for their benefit, so they would have a fair and just society. There is a third that Paul mentions in Galatians, namely to be a tutor for God’s people until the Messiah comes. It keep them and us under sin, keeping them and us having to trust in God’s mercy, grace and kindness. They and we could never rely on our obedience to it for our standing before the LORD.
Now we should note the twofold doing of these things he commanded the Israelites. They were to do these things with all their mind and all their heart. “With all your heart and all your heart,” is repeated a number of times in Deuteronomy. It seems to be shorthand for Deut. 6, “5Love the LORD your God with all your mind, all your heart, and all your strength.” What we tell here and those other places is the LORD is not looking for mere outward obedience. It seems some Israelites, like the Pharisees, while knowing this passage of Scripture were thinking it was quite fine just to keep these things outwardly, based on Jesus’ charging many of them with hypocrisy.
We should take this to heart as well. The LORD Jesus Christ is not just looking for an outward obedience to his commands. He is looking for us to follow him, to listen to him, to obey him from a heart that believes all that he has done for us. The Israelites were called to do these things from the heart because the LORD, who made heaven and earth, has called them by grace to be his people. We too have been called to be the LORD Jesus Christ’s people by grace. Through the proclamation of the good news to repent of our sins and to trust Jesus won for us the forgiveness of sins, ransomed us from death by his death, and gives eternal life to all who believe this, we are given by him, by the Holy Spirit, a circumcised heart, a new heart, a new life that wants to fear him, walk in his ways, love him and serve him will all our mind and heart.
Heavenly Father, grant us such faith in Jesus that we have a new heart and mind that desires to please him and you in thought, word and deed to show our thankfulness for all your mercies. In Jesus’s name we pray Amen.