Ninety:14
Deuteronomy 8 through Deuteronomy 23:11
Following no other gods came up several times through out these chapters of Deuteronomy and it wasn’t just don’t follow these other God. It was more like stone to death anyone who chooses to follow other gods other than the one true God. There was no grace for religious adultery.
How the times have changed. I’m not sure what to think about this other than this was God’s M.O. with the Israelites. In the key of translating this into the culture in which I live, I would say put to death any kind of influencing relationship that pulls me away from God. Jesus obviously lived with the chief of sinners, but not to allow them to influence him.
He was to influence them and this is the balance. We’re told today to put to death anything that may distract us from God (and this is a metaphorical death of course, not the kind of death experienced by those in the writings of Deuteronomy) but we also live in the tension of being the light to the world. The question to be pondered: how do we live in the tension of carving out anything that distracts us from the one true God while being a light to those who need him? I have no easy answer.
Intercessory prayer is a major player in this reading as well. Moses spent a total of 80 days praying and fasting for God’s people who were about to be in the wake of God’s wrath because of their unholiness. Where has this kind of prayer gone? Am I blind to it or not tuned into what’s really going on around me? What I can answer is that God listens and responds to prayer and for the Israelites, it was in their favor.
As I’m in the last third of my first seminary degree, the Levites have continually caught my attention. They were set apart for a special ministry of God, making intercession for the people before God. While I have no desire to make this kind of intercession because Jesus my Savior does so now, I do have a desire to be a light and in the words of Tim Tennent, the new President at Asbury Seminary as of 2009, I desire to be a street lamp, not a candle light. Maybe I can even more so through intercessory prayer.


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