The covenant of the Lord
First People of the Covenant of Love
Day 13 of 34
Welcome to our daily bible studies of the Book of Deuteronomy. Today, we are at chapter thirteen (and day 13 of 34), the Covenant.
The Holy Scriptures are there for our benefit. They are there for us to learn of God and learn to avoid the mistakes made by the first people of the covenant of love. According to Deuteronomy chapter thirteen, there are three things we must know about the test for the covenant of love; where it comes from, how it happens and why.
Detractors From the covenant From Within
In our daily Christian life, we must be very aware, of people we know , or relatives, who by their words attempt to lead us away from our Covenant, from serving the Lord our God. These are often loved ones: a brother, our child: son or daughter, or spouse: wife or husband, a friend, our parents, or someone from our community. We will call them Detractors. But be certain they will not be strangers. But recall the scripture says they “… are gone out from among you.” By reason of this we know the Detractors are also party to the covenant of love. Remember how the first people of covenant discouraged the hearts of their own from doing the command of God? ”Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakims there,” (Deuteronomy 1:28).
Lure People of Covenant to new Things - Yoga & Transcendental Meditation
The sole purpose of the Detractors is to discourage our hearts from following God with words of lies, deceit, failures, death and diseases. They will attempt to interest the people of the covenant of love to try new things. New things include yoga and transcendental meditation and tattoos.
Christian should meditate and they do meditate. And they should practice doing so every day. Christians should meditate ONLY on the Word of God. The minds of Christians must never be blank they should always be in control of their thoughts.
“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success,” (Joshua 1:8)
“But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night,” (Psalm 1:2)
“Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word,” (Psalm 119:148).
The people of the covenant of love know their God. The Detractors focus is to entice the people of covenant ”to serve other gods, which they ye have not known.” But how do they achieve this? By luring them to do new things. This does not mean anything new is bad or idolatrous. But anything new from a people who does not know your covenant God will lead you away from Him.
How do we Verify this new Thing Will Not Divert us From the Covenant?
How do we verify this new thing is from God? We should enquire of God in prayer. But our quest to know continues by searching the Word of God and asking diligently of others. Until we are certain that this thing is from God. Who do we ask? Ask the older people of the covenant of promises, they should know. Anything that causes us to lose our soul will take us away from the worship of God. “Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; ” (Deuteronomy 4:9).
If we learn the Word of God we will know the ungodly words. As difficult as it is to detect a wolf in sheep clothing, it is equally difficult to identify a prophet of God who is a deceiver. But recall Jesus Christ, told His covenant people how to identify them. Christ says, by their fruit you shall know them. By this he means the action of a person should agree with his words concerning a particular thing or topic. Do not say one thing and do some thing different. As Christians we should never be obsessed with what any person or group of persons says about a topic independent of the word of God. The two, must agree and the Word is the ultimate guide.
Secondly, know for sure that regardless of who; family or friend, community member or pastor if they attempt to lead us away from our covenant of love the Lord will eliminate them.
It is a serious matter to God to speak to the people of the covenant of love to turn them from their God. In This chapter - Deuteronomy 13 – the Lord commands that all the Detractors be put to death. He dictates the community member be put to death “with the edge of the sword”. For another Detractor He decrees ”And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he” dies. For the last Detractor, the Lord mandates “And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death”. Each Detractor was sentenced to die by the Lord “because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God.”
Motivation for the Test of the Covenant
The God of the covenant of love is the omniscient God, He has total knowledge of everything. The Lord knows how His people of the covenant will react to the inducement of the Detractors. But His reason for allowing these act to happen is to prove us. Moses said, “to prove whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” It is a test. This is not the first time the Lord conducts such a test. He did a similar test on Job when He allowed Satan to afflict his body and all he owned . But the Lord commanded Satan to spare the life of Job.
Let us be cognisant of one thing, the information the Bible provides is not for the benefit of God but (us) the readers. The Bible provides this information for us to know we should always be faithful to God for we are often tested to reveal our love for Him.
Finally, people of the covenant of love , our test for the covenant of love emanates from among us. The Lord will eliminate all who seek to turn His people of covenant from serving Him. The Detractors are to prove (test) our love for the God of the covenant. The test is a person speaking words to entice us from serving God.
Let us strive to know the word of God, to detect the word that is not from Him. Let us live by the covenant of love applying His Word daily, to our lives in speech, in action and thoughts.”Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him,” (Deuteronomy 13:4).
The Church represents the people of the New Covenant.
{ 0 comments… add one now }
{ 5 trackbacks }