I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 5-7.

    The passage begins with Moses restating the Ten Commandments (as we know them), which are referred to in Hebrew as the “Ten Words” or “Ten Sayings”. Moses reminds his audience that these words were spoken by God to all of those assembled before the mountain at Mt. Sinai. Moses instructed his audience to wholly commit themselves to obeying the commandments which God had given them. I really love what Moses says in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. God is our only god and we must love Him with all of our being, with our minds, our emotions, and our physical abilities. Truly loving God means doing as He has instructed us. In order to be sure that we do as He has instructed we need to repeat God’s commands again and again, to ourselves, to our children, and to our neighbors. Let us talk about God’s will for our lives, both long term and for the next minute, when we are at home, at work, or on vacation, when we get up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. How does what I am doing right now fit into the instructions which God has given me?

    Moses goes on from there to remind the Children of Israel that God did not choose them because of how wonderful they were. He chose them because He loved them. The same is true of us today. God did not choose us because we were wonderful. In fact, we were the opposite of wonderful when God chose us. Each and every one of us has done terrible, horrible things deserving of complete condemnation, but God has chosen to redeem us and transform us. If we accept His transformation of ourselves we need fear no one and nothing. God will not allow anyone or anything to disrupt the transformation He has in mind for us, although He will not force us to accept that transformation. Part of accepting God’s transformation is ridding ourselves of the desire for the detestable things which we did before we encountered Him.