And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and 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.
Devotional Thoughts
The awful fact is that ungodly forces in our society have rejected God. All mention of him is now being removed from our schools, our courts, our public institutions. Soon these same forces will attempt to outlaw the words “one nation under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.
I believe this madness will not go unanswered for long. I’m convinced God is going to act quickly.
The Bible offers warning after warning on this matter. Why did God judge Noah’s generation by sending a flood? Why the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? It all happened because of lawlessness. The Bible says that in those societies every person became a law unto himself, and the godly anguished over it. Lot, who lived in Sodom, was vexed daily by his society’s lawlessness (see 2 Peter 2:8).
We see God’s ultimate plan for a lost, lawless world at the dawn of Israel’s history.
By the close of the Book of Genesis, God had chosen a small, insignificant people to become a teaching nation. He wanted to raise up a people who would be living examples to the heathen world of his goodness. To bring about such a testimony, God took his people into places that were beyond their control. He isolated Israel in a wilderness where he alone would be their only source of life, caring for their every need.
Israel had no control over their survival in that desolate place. They couldn’t control the availability of food or water. They couldn’t control their destination since they had no compasses or maps. How would they eat and drink? Which direction would they go? Where would they end up?
God would do it all for them. He would guide them every day by a miracle cloud, one that glowed at night and dispelled the darkness before them. He would feed them with angels’ food from heaven and provide them with water from a rock. Yes, every single need would be supplied by the Lord, and no enemy would be able to defeat them.
“Out of heaven He let you [Israel] hear His voice, that He might instruct you” (Deuteronomy 4:36 NKJV). God’s people would hear his very words guiding them, and in turn they would testify, “Who is there of all mankind who has heard the voice of the living God?” (see Deuteronomy 4:32–34).
The nations surrounding ancient Israel were filled with “other gods,” idols made of wood, silver and gold. These gods were mute, unable to see or hear, unable to love, guide or protect the people who worshipped them. Any one of those nations could look to Israel and see a special people whom God carried through a terrible wilderness. They would see a God who spoke to his people, who loved and felt, who answered prayers and provided miracles. Here was a living God, one who guided his people in every detail of their lives.
This was the very reason God raised up Israel: to show a heathen world what the true, living God was like. As he looked upon the nations, he saw a human race filled with violence and lawlessness, crying pitifully to gods that couldn’t help them. It was a world filled with restless, striving, wicked-minded people who wandered astray like sheep without a shepherd.
So God raised up a people who would be trained by him. There had to be a people who lived under his authority, who would trust him completely, giving him full control of every aspect of their lives. That people would become his testimony to the world.