June 17, 2010

What If I Don’t Keep Every Single Command?
Deuteronomy 13:18 (NLT)

“The LORD your God will be merciful only if you listen to his voice and keep all his commands that I am giving you today, doing what pleases him." Deuteronomy 13:18(NLT)

Pastor’s Blog

Get on the wrong side of how things work and you’ll be in trouble. Get on the good side of how things work and life will go well for you. Popular wisdom, especially in the business and political worlds is that the way to get ahead is through manipulation, influence, working the angles, dishonesty, etc . . . that’s the real world, many say. People who say this have a point. All that “works” for a while, if you mean by “works”, more money, affluence, power, etc. But that definition of “works” is short lived. It runs out of gas. Sooner or later each of us meets life as God made it to work and if we’ve been on the wrong side of that we’re in trouble with God, at which point nothing else will much matter.

Moses is saying, get on the good side of how things work. The rest of the Old Testament tells that they didn’t. Life never went well for them in the promised land. Sure, there were interspersed times of prosperity and some people got rich, fat and happy. But the Old Testament goes to great lengths to remind that those were brief periods of cheating the odds. In the end choosing my plan over God’s always, 100% of the time, in the end fails. Those odds are never beaten.

Humpty Dumpty (Israel) fell with a great crash, with great periods of suffering preceeding the fall. And great was the fall of it.

I have never obeyed every single command, nor have you. And if we’re honest we’ve suffered the consequences or we will, and so have or will others. Yet, never forget that Grace always precedes law. God loves, will never forsake us, gives second and hundredth chances. At every new start he says, obey. A trajectory of desire to obey + contrition when we fail is a winning formula which God will honor. A trajectory of disobedience + pride when I fall is a formula that will keep me forever outside of God’s Kingdom.

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