The Ultimate New Year’s Resolution: Dive into God's Word

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Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host Andrew Rapaport, the Executive Director of Striving Fraternity and the
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Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. We are here to give you biblical interpretations and applications for the
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Christian life. Let me first start off by saying Happy New Year! And as we look to the
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New Year, I want to provide for you a sermon that I was asked to do at my home church,
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Oxford Valley Chapel. You can find out more about Oxford Valley Chapel at OxfordValleyChapel .org.
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We meet in Levittown, Pennsylvania. If you're in that area and want to find a good church, come check us out,
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Oxford Valley Chapel. My pastor got ill and therefore called me, or technically texted me on Friday and said,
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Hey, would you be able to preach on Sunday? So, well,
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Friday and Saturday became a study day all day, so I had to prepare quickly for a sermon.
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He wanted something on the importance of studying the Word of God to bring us into the
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New Year. So that is the topic of this sermon, and I really hope that you find it encouraging in the
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New Year. Enjoy. One, two, three! Welcome to The Rap Report with your host,
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Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the
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Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
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Well, good morning. For those who are here visiting with us, I hope that you would come back when
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Pastor Dan is feeling better. And for his preaching, but we welcome you who are here.
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Pastor Dan, as you know, has been going through a series as we led up to the celebration of the birth of Christ.
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And he asked that we, what he wanted to do is to look to start the new year at the importance of us reading
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Scripture. And so in light of that, I figured I would take us to a passage most of you probably don't know.
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You probably don't read it regularly. But if you would turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6, that's, you know, the books we usually skip.
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You know, we start the year with Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, and we just skip over those ones in the middle there.
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But Deuteronomy is actually what you may not realize is actually a covenant that we have.
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Hey, Yim, if you could just, are they going down to the kids program? You want to guide them there?
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Thank you. So Deuteronomy is actually a contract.
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And so this is a covenant that God is making with his people.
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We look at Deuteronomy chapter 6, we're going to look at the first nine verses. It says, this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the
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Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the
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Lord your God, you and your son and your son's sons, by keeping all of his statutes and his commands, which
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I've commanded you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.
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Hear, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the
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Lord your God, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised to you in the land flowing with milk and honey.
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Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
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You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might.
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And these words I command you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you 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 up.
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You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be on the frontlets between your eyes.
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You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
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Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for, more importantly, you in the person of the
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Holy Spirit, whose ministry it is to bring your word to an understanding of our minds and an application for our lives.
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We ask, Lord, now that you might help us to better understand your word so that we can live a life more worthy of you.
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We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. This is one of the most recited passages in any shul, or what you might call temple or synagogue.
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This passage is known as the Shema. It starts in verse 4. The Shema is the
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Hebrew word for hear. Hear, O Israel. This is something that is recited throughout
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Jewish custom. It is something that, as we'll see, is practiced. If any of you have been around Orthodox Jewish people, you will understand some of this.
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Maybe if you've ever taken a trip to Israel, you'll see them on the plane. As the sun rises, they will have little boxes that they'll put on their hands and heads, and I'm going to explain some of that.
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But this is a passage that is recited over and over throughout every synagogue.
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I will spare you the sake of me singing to you the Shema, because we're very glad that Bobby was singing this morning, because that is a blessing on the church to not have me sing.
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But it is something I grew up hearing all the time. We would sing it every week. But the foundation of this is really the foundation of life.
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This passage is one that Moses was commanded to teach to the people.
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And what is the emphasis, he says? He says this is the commandments, the statutes, and the rules. This is basically what he's giving here is the idea of the word of God.
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The commandments are those things which the word in Hebrew is a commission, a commandment, a right, a speculation, a teaching, a precept, or a prohibition.
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Where the statutes, he says now this is the commandment, and he clarifies that by calling them statutes and rules.
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And a statute is something that's a law or a prescription, something that is a decision or a boundary, something that is established like a decree.
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Where the rules are also decisions, but they're more of a judgment, something where there's a dispute or a case, a claim.
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So you have two aspects of the command. One that is something of a decree, something that's declared, and the other is the ruling of it.
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And this is what the commandments are. Moses was commanded to give to Israel these rules, these ways of living.
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And the interesting thing with it is people will often say, well, that's for the Old Testament. That's for Israel.
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We're free. Well, I wonder because he says that these commandments that God gave to Moses to teach to you and to your children or your son and your sons' sons.
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Well, that kind of sounds like he means for generation after generation after generation. Now, this is something that we don't do as well as we should.
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One of the things is you look in a, even though, unfortunately, much of the modern
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Judaism, what we'd call rabbinic Judaism, some will refer to it as Second Temple Judaism, it's different than the
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Judaism of the Bible. But what you see is this notion where there's the idea of repeating history.
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If any of you have been in a Passover Seder, the major part of a
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Seder is you have the youngest person, the youngest male, which was me until my cousin was old enough, has to ask four questions.
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And the purpose of those questions are to have the head of the house recite the history of what
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God did to bring Israel out of slavery into the Promised Land. This book that we have is
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Israel just before they're going into the Promised Land with a covenant between God and his people as they enter into the
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Promised Land. And he's saying that here in a passage because he says that you may do, sorry, now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules, that the
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Lord your God commanded me to teach you that you may do them in the land which you are going over to to possess it.
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By the way, you notice Moses didn't say that we are going over to. Yeah, Moses never made it to the
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Promised Land. That was a judgment on something he had done.
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But he's saying as you go into the Promised Land, picture 40 years in the wilderness. Most of the people grew up knowing nothing but wilderness.
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In fact, there's only two of them that would have been old enough to remember what it was like to be a slave in Egypt.
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And as they're walking in the wilderness with this promise of 40 years and you will enter in to the
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Promised Land. Just think about it. Picture yourself in that position. Do you think maybe you're like 39 years old and you're going, are we really going to go to the
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Promised Land? Is there really a Promised Land? I mean, okay, maybe it's none of you.
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Maybe it's just me that sometimes we question God's promises. We don't really think he's going to come through with them.
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Don't you see what's on the news? We have this idea of how
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God should work. And I could picture some of the Israelites after 40 years in the wilderness where their clothes are not wearing out.
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I mean, they didn't have to go and get new clothes. The food was just provided for them every day, just raining it down.
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Could you picture that? No having to go to the grocery store. Oh wait, they didn't have those back then.
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They actually had to grow and kill their own food. Yikes. For many of us, that would be bad.
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But what did they do? They just had the promises of God every single day shown to them.
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But I still think, because if you read through the Bible, you know Israel's history. Yeah, even with him doing that, they still would question.
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Can you picture after 40 years they're questioning, is God really going to come through with his promises? And here
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Moses is giving this contract to them, and he's telling them that they are going to, if you look in verse 3, that they are going to enter into a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey.
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And as they think of this, Moses is giving them a command, and it's a command from God to not only for them, but for them to teach to future generations.
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So this would also be for us. And the root of this is the
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Word of God. He's teaching them the commands of God. What are they? It is this that we hold in our hands.
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Now back then Moses only had five books. This was the completion, what he's writing at this time, the completion of what we call the
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Pentateuch. For five, so these are the five books, the five books of the law.
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This is what God has given to Moses to give to the people, to take into the promised land.
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This is what they have. And as they enter into the promised land, what they have is the words that came from God to Moses for them to live their life.
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And we often think that, well, we have the Bible.
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And maybe we have many Bibles in our home. We take it for granted. I had someone that many years ago came to my house, and he was looking at my office, and I have many
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Bibles. And he had said, boy, Andrew, with all those Bibles, you should be the holiest man
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I know. To which my wife quickly responded, only if he reads them. You see, we have the
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Bible. But do you know that there's many who don't? Many around the world, even today.
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I remember reading or seeing a Bible that someone had. He collected rare Bibles.
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And he showed me a Bible that had a big stain on it.
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It was the blood of the owner. And as the
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Romans, I believe it was in Romans, but as they came in during the persecution that was in the 1500s, someone wanted this man to give up his
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Protestant Bible. And he refused. And they slaughtered him over his
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Bible. The word of God was so important to him that he would not give up his
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Bible. In fact, in the early 1500s, and we could put the next slide up.
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I'll put that quote so you guys can read along with me, because it's important to think of. In the early 1500s, the
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Protestant Reformation was fueled by widespread dissemination of one thing, the
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Bible. Martin Luther, after translating the Scriptures into German, ignited a spiritual awakening among the people.
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They began to read the Bible for themselves, which led to profound changes in faith and practice.
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The historical moment reminds us that the word of God is powerful, transformative, prompting us to prioritize reading the
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Scripture today more than ever before. We often think of Martin Luther as the man who radically changed the course of history in the
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Reformation. You see, the reason we think of Martin Luther is because what
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Martin Luther did was translate the Scripture into the language of that time. But there was something else that really had a major impact on that.
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The reason the word of God spread so quickly was the development of a thing called the printing press.
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That's actually why the 95 theses that Luther posted, they were actually posted in Latin, for those who may not know.
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And it was translated by students. He nailed it to a door for discussion. And what ended up happening is, as students saw what he had written, they translated it.
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The first thing that was printed on the Guttenheim printing press was the Bible. And the second thing was the 95 theses.
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And they got printed and disseminated. But you see, Martin Luther was not the guy who really, he understood the teaching of communicating the word of God in the language of the people, not in a language people didn't understand, which would have been
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Latin in that day. But he got it from someone before him. He got it from a man named
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Jan Hus. Jan Hus was about 100 years before Luther and was killed because he had the audacity to teach people in the common language, to teach people in English who knew
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English, to have them understand the Bible on their own, not going through a
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Catholic church. And he was actually killed for such things, because he believed that we should get our doctrine and our life and practice from this book alone, not from a church.
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But it actually didn't, that didn't come with Jan Hus. See, before Jan Hus, when
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Jan Hus was in seminary, he had been studying and he had been translating, because part of his job, how he got paid, was to make copies.
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You know, this was before a time of Xerox. Oh wait, some of you don't even know what that is. So a time before we just had everything digitally, before there was a printing press where people actually had to make hand copies of everything.
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And Jan Hus was making copies of a man named
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Tyndale, who had the audacity to translate the
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Bible from Latin into English. And the Catholic church killed him for it. In fact, they so hated
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Tyndale that after he was dead by several decades,
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I think it was almost 100 years, they dug up his body and burned it, because he believed that there would be a day where his body would be resurrected.
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So they burned his body as if God, who created everything out of nothing, he can't figure out how to put a body back together again.
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Think about that. But Tyndale, sorry,
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I said Tyndale, Wycliffe, John Wycliffe. Wycliffe had believed that people would not live a life worthy living for God if they did not have a
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Bible they can understand. And so he believed that we needed to have a
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Bible in the language of people. And we are glad for that work today.
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How many of us know Latin, by the way? Yeah. The reality is, as we look to the scriptures, that many of us may have many copies in our homes.
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But how many of those get read? Are we truly reading the
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Word of God? Do we truly believe that this is a book that is
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God's very Word spoken to us? As we said in the opening of the service out of 2
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Timothy 3, 16 and 17, the purpose of the Word of God is that you and I may be complete and equipped for every good work.
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How many of us would like to be complete and equipped for every good work? Well, we have a resource for that.
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We have it from God. Let me ask you, if the
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President of the United States, whether you like him or not, whoever is in the White House at the time, if he was to write you a letter, would you tell your friends?
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If you got an invite to the White House, would you tell your friends? I have a friend of mine that showed me an invitation he had, a gold -plated invitation.
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You don't get many of those. It's an invitation from the king of Saudi Arabia for him to go to Saudi Arabia.
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Now, Saudi Arabia was bringing mixed martial arts into the country, and he was involved in that, and that's why he got that.
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He's quick to show that to people. If you had an invitation from a king, would you be willing to share?
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Would you want others to know what the king says to you? Well, those of us that are in Christ, we have that very thing right here.
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We have the very words not just of a king, but the king of kings.
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The Lord of Lords, the creator of the universe, has spoken to us. And so often, we need the reminder that Moses had to give to the
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Israelites as they enter into the Promised Land. You ever wonder why so often in Scripture we have constant reminders?
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Why is it that Israel, much of the way that the Jewish lifestyle is, is we build it off of retelling the stories of the past.
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Why? Because I think many of us are forgetful. We get so busy in life that we forget, and we need the reminder.
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And that's what Moses is doing here in the first three verses here. He's basically saying we must be reminded that the
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Word of God is powerful. The Word of God is the foundation for all faith and practice.
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You want to know how to live a holy life? It's found in the words of Scripture.
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And that is the foundation. If you're going to have a faithful living, if you want to live a life that is faithful, the foundation of that is the
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Word of God. If your faith is not based upon the Word of God, it's based on sand.
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It'll shipwreck you. The only thing that we could trust and know that is absolute, that is something that is not going to change, it is the
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Bible. God's Word. Because of its source. The author cannot lie.
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And guess what? He knows everything. Past, present, future. There's nothing he doesn't know.
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So when he speaks something and he can't lie, we know that it will come through fruition.
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So he's commanding the Israelites as they enter into this promised land.
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This book is basically Moses' last words to Israel. He's been leading them for all these 40 years, and now he's going to let them depart into the promised land as he stays behind.
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And he's giving them these final words, and his foundation for them is the
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Word of God. And he gives instruction now for the
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Israelites to love God wholly. Look at this in verses 4 and 5.
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This is what we would refer to as the Shema. Shema Yisrael Adonai Erechenu Adonai Echad.
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It is what is sung, and we call it the Shema because the first word is to hear.
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It says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one.
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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.
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He sits there and says, Hear this, O Israel. Listen to this. The Lord is one.
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Now that doesn't shock us these days because we do not live in a country or in a land where there's many gods.
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Because of the expanse of Christianity, because of what really happened with the
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Reformation, the idea of Christianity has spread throughout the world, and there's many places around the world where they believe in one
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God. Well, actually, everyone believes in one God. According to Romans 1, others suppress that truth and unrighteousness, but everyone knows
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God exists according to God. He's put that in their hearts, the evidence is all around them.
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But it says here, he says, God is one. In a land where everyone had multiple gods, this was strange.
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In fact, this may surprise you, but in the first century, do you know that Christians were referred to as atheists?
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We think of atheists that believe there is no God, because that's actually what the word means. A meaning negative, no
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God. And the reason that in the Roman culture, they called Christians atheists is because they only believed in one
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God. In a land where there were many gods.
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And as part of what Alexander the Great did was, as he conquered an area, he just took their gods and added them in to the
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Greek pantheon of gods. So that was how they assimilated. So by the time of Rome, they had a lot of gods.
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Same thing was in the day as in Egypt. And so what you see here is, here you have
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Moses saying to him, God is one. That's a mind -blowing thing for them to really think about.
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Most of these people grew up, for those that would remember, grew up in Egypt where there were many gods.
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And as they would travel in and they'd go into the promised land and come to these other nations that were there, they would have many gods.
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But he's saying here that there is one God. Now, by the way, let me address a problem that some may say with this.
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Sometimes you hear people use this passage when it comes to the Trinity. And they will say that this is teaching that God is unified, one in unity.
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That's false. And if you speak to anyone who knows Hebrew, they will correct you. And then you'll feel embarrassed.
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So let me save you from that embarrassment by teaching you a little bit of Hebrew. This word is one, meaning singular.
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I don't know why people feel they have to deal with this somehow, saying that it's one being unity.
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Because when we look at the Trinity, there is how many gods? One gods. There's no multiple gods.
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We believe in the Trinity there's one God, one being, three persons. Yes, the three persons are unified.
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But we can sit and agree with this, the Lord is one. I don't know where that teaching has come up from, but I just don't want to spare you in case you ever run into, if you use that with someone who is a
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Hebrew speaker, they will quickly correct you, and rightfully so. But we believe in one
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God. But it's very interesting. Because as we study this and look at this, the scriptures are quite clear.
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The way to love God wholly is described here. But it's very interesting if you speak to anyone that is an
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Orthodox Jewish person today. Because as we read this, it seems quite simple what the greatest commandment would be.
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In fact, this is something that we see asked of Jesus. There's debate over what's the greatest commandment. And he says, quoting
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Deuteronomy 6, to love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, with all your soul.
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And why is that puzzling? Well, to us, that seems quite simple. These passages focus on the commitment of our personal expressions of faith in Scripture.
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The more we understand the Scripture, the more we're going to love the God of Scripture. The more we read about what
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God has done for us, the more we are going to be in love with the God that did that for us.
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In case we don't know, in case someone has come in here and doesn't know, well, what has
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God done for us? Almighty God who is in heaven, where all the angels were singing his praises.
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There's no sin, there's no suffering, there's no sickness, there's no starvation. God left that place to come to earth.
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Now stop and think about that one for a moment. Would you want to leave heaven to come here? We all want to get to heaven.
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Once we're there, do we want to come back? No. God left heaven to become a man.
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He became a man at the time that one of the worst ways of killing a person would be perfected.
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So that he could die on a cross as a punishment for the sins that you and I have committed.
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We deserved eternity in a lake of fire because we have broken the law of God.
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We have broken these commandments. Our pride makes us think we don't need
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God. We can do things. We can earn our way to heaven. God left heaven to come to earth to die on a cross.
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Being truly God, that moment in time counted for all of eternity.
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That is how he could pay an eternal death once in time. Being truly a man, never having sinned, he could be a substitute for us.
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This is what makes Christianity unique from all the religions in the world. It is the only religion that can satisfy a
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God who is both just and merciful. He's just because he paid the full weight of sin himself on the cross.
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Because his nature is eternal, it counted for eternity. And then he can give us mercy.
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Because now that the payment has been made, he can offer to us eternal life.
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That is what God has done for us. So when we look at the scriptures, we learn this.
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We learn what God has done for us. And the more we do that, the more we should be in love with him.
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The more we think about what we rightfully deserved. Eternity in a lake of fire.
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But we who know Christ, we have eternal life. By the way, eternal life is not, according to John, living in heaven.
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It's not living forever. Eternal life is to know
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Christ. That's what eternal life is. And so, as we look to the scriptures, it should motivate us to realize how in awe we are of God.
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We say that we worship God. What does the word worship mean?
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Worship comes from, in the German, it has the idea of putting worth in someone or something.
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The object of the worship needs to be worthy.
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Quite frankly, we can never find a more worthy object of worship than the almighty
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God of the universe, who came to earth to die on a cross as a payment for our sin. That though we deserve hell, he has exchanged that and given us heaven.
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He who knew no sin became sin that we might have the righteousness of God.
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2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21. And so, as we look here, this is so interesting because as we could think about that, as we could look to the scriptures to help us to have more of a love for Christ, and if you're reading your
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Bible, and we have, as we do each year, we have a
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Bible reading plan we do as a church. And as we're finishing up the book of Revelation, and some of you are going, good, we're going to start a new reading plan this year that will start on Monday, well,
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Monday through Friday. It's going to be different. We're only going to do five -day -a -week reading plan. We'll still read through the whole
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Bible in a year. We're going to do both Old and New Testament. But what this will be now is to go five days a week, so you have
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Saturday and Sunday to dig in deeper in what you've studied all week. Why? Because if you're just reading the
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Bible, if you're reading this every day, but you're not getting a greater love for God, then you're not really reading it.
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You're wasting time. If I can encourage you with anything at all, and this will sound strange, please don't read your
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Bible. Never read your Bible. Engage with it.
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Meditate upon it. Ruminate on it. The idea of meditate, by the way, is, it'll be a little graphic, but once I say this, it'll never get out of your memory, and good, because I don't want it to be.
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The word comes from the way cows eat. And if you're not familiar with a cow, they have five stomachs.
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And what they do is they eat some grass, and they put it into their first chamber of their stomach, and then they regurgitate it up and then put it back into their second stomach and their third and their fourth and their fifth.
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That's where we get the idea of meditate. Graphic enough for you? You're never going to forget it?
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I know. I haven't either. But that's the idea of what we should do, not just read the Bible, but bring it back up into our minds.
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And we put it down throughout the day and bring it back up into our minds. Meditate upon it so that it takes hold of your life.
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Charles Spurgeon said that we should be so into our Bible, reading our Bible, that if someone was to cut us, we would bleed
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Bible. And this is what, as Christians, we focus on, that we should love the
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Lord our God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength. But Rabbinic Judaism is different.
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And I did look all over my house. I could not find my phylacteries. Most of you would call phylacteries.
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That's the Greek word that you might see in the Bible. The proper word for them is called tefillin, which none of you know.
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But that is a portion that what the Jewish people do in their legalism, because any time man creates a religion, they create one that's legalistic.
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It's based on doing rules. Okay? I remember speaking with an
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Orthodox rabbi that was trying to convert me back to Judaism. And he told me the reason to convert me back was because my family line is of the
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Korahites. Now, if you don't know what they are, they're the ones that take care of the temple. So they want Korahites, if they can reestablish the temple, they have priests to care for it.
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And so what you end up seeing, though, is we got into a big discussion on this passage of Scripture. Because he says to me, you
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Christians, you think you can just enter into prayer as if it's just kind of you come in, you go out, not a big deal.
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You open the Bible, and you just read it and move on with your life. He said, but we, we structure our entire day around the
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Word of God and around our prayers. You know what? He's right, though. Many of us are that way.
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We enter in, we just, okay, I do my Scripture reading in the morning. That's done. Let me go about my day. I said my prayer.
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I prayed before I ate my meal. Check that off. If you want to feel bad,
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Martin Luther used to pray two hours a day unless he had a busy day. Then he prayed three. How many of us set aside even two hours a day on a busy day or a less busy day?
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Granted, he didn't have cell phones and all the distractions we have today, but even more. I used to bother people because I used to post every morning, you know, if you haven't been in God's Word or on your face before God, get off a face, you know, or I reverse it.
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If you haven't been on your face before God or in God's book, get off of Facebook. If you haven't shared the good news, stop watching
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Fox News and, you know, just reminders. We need to be about this book. This is what is in the pages of this book are far more important than anything that you're going to see on social media.
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And it's far better for you anyway. But what we see is that the Jewish rabbi was explaining to me that the reason that they have their whole life structured is because what we see in the following here.
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Read along with me the next verses six to nine. They make this as the greatest commandment.
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And these words I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children.
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You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and you on the front.
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Let's there should be on the front. Let's between your eyes and you shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. And this is they take this lead.
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So where where they would see that we kind of just say, oh, we'll love the Lord our God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. They'll say, oh, but see, the great commandment is actually this, that we are to teach them to our children when they sit, when they stand, when they rise down, when they lie, when they lie down, when they rise up.
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Put them on the on your hands and on your eyes. Put them on the doorposts. I looked through my house for my
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Tefillim. I was going to show you what they look like, but I can't find mine. I can't find my mezuzah. But a mezuzah is a thing that you'd see in a
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Jewish house that's on the doorpost. Maybe you've seen those before. What's inside that little mezuzah is this passage of Scripture that we have before us.
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What they would do is they would take this passage of Scripture and a couple others. They would have
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Deuteronomy 6, 4 to 9, the passage we just read. They would have Deuteronomy 11, 13 to 21.
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They would have the Kadesh, which is Exodus 13, 1 to 10.
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And then they had Exodus 13, 11 to 16, all written out in Scripture.
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And they'd put that in a little box. And you'd have two boxes. And what they would do when they rise up in the morning, at sunrise and then at sunset.
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And most of the time when people see us, if you've ever flown to Israel, you'll see them all doing this on a plane.
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But they all, as soon as the sun is rising, they will put a box on their hands and they wrap it around as they say certain prayers.
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And you have to wrap it a certain way. And then they'll put it between their eyes, on their head, and they'll wrap it and say prayers.
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They will put the mezuzah on their doorpost. Why? Because they're taking this section of Scripture and making it legalism.
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And they'll say, well, they're following Scripture where we're not. And yet what some will do is take the words of Scripture and make it legalism instead of understanding the purpose of the
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Scripture. You see, what we have to realize is that we have to, what
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Moses is commanding Israel is not to literally take the Scripture and put it on their hands and their heads.
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Or to put it on their doorposts. What he's literally telling them is to imprint
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Scripture intentionally on your life. We should not be going throughout the day and taking the tefillin, which is, you know, this idea of wrapping it in a box and putting it around our hands.
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As if what they're doing when they're doing that, they're doing no different than when we just say, well, we read the
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Bible today, that's it, done, checkmark. That's not the purpose of what Moses wants us to do.
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What Moses is telling us is that we should be living a life intentionally with Scripture as every part of our life.
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Your boss comes into your office and lets you know you've just been fired. Is your first reaction to pray?
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Many of us, it wouldn't be. Nehemiah is doing something, if you know the account of Nehemiah, he is there before the king.
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And when you're before the king, you're not supposed to have a sad face. He's depressed. Why? Because he knows
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Israel is in shambles. And the king says, you know, asks him why he has a sad face.
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You know his first reaction is? He prayed. Why? Why did he pray?
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Because that was his lifestyle. Daniel is there, he's got a habit, a whole life of devoted to the word of God.
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To the point where those that want to get him out of office, what do they do?
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They go, well, there's nothing we can actually do against this guy. So you know what? Let's get the king to come up with a law that says you can only pray to the king.
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Because we know Daniel will not obey. Why? Because his heart was wholly devoted to the
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Lord. Why? Because he was devoted to the Scriptures. So what does he do?
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He goes right to doing the very thing he does every day. Three times a day he would read the Scriptures out in the open.
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And he got caught. And they expected he'd get caught. Didn't quite work out for those, if you know the end of the story.
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I won't ruin it for you. Go read the book of Daniel. Daniel chapter 6, if you need to know the ending there.
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Be a good thing to read all six, the first six chapters. Get the whole story. But what was
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Daniel's devotion to? The word of God. See, Moses is not telling
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Israel to physically bind the word of God on their hands and their eyes. But the idea is if we look through life, everything we do, we're viewing it through a lens of Scripture.
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We're seeing everything in light of Scripture. When things happen,
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I remember when they had the election four years ago. There were so many Christians that were so depressed because Biden was getting the
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White House. As if God wasn't in control? No, the reaction we should have when something like that happens and we might think it's bad is go,
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What's God doing in this? I actually was excited. Because I was like, well, hey, it is a great time to share the gospel.
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Because you know what? No one was indifferent to the gospel anymore. They either hated it or they listened to it.
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But I never had anyone going, oh, yeah, okay. I thought it was a great time.
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I'm odd. Because I like sharing the gospel. Right?
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But we have to view everything through a lens of Scripture. But if you're not reading the Scripture, you don't know what
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God wants. The reality is that so many of us, so many people that name the name of Christ, go through life saying, well,
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I kind of think this is what the Bible means. Or they come to the Bible wishing the
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Bible said what they believe. And yet the reality is we have to come to the
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Bible to understand what God says. Because what God says is what's going to change our life.
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And if we're reading this book and it is not affecting us, it is not changing our life, then you're just reading it.
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So as we enter into a new year, may you meditate upon the Scriptures. Not just read it.
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May it be something that is part of the core of your being. May it be something that if someone was to come to you and say, give us your
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Bible, your last Bible, or we'll take your life, that you would say, I can't be without the
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Bible. Take my life. Send me to be with my Lord and Savior. At least one person had done.
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How important is the Word of God to you? Moses was telling the Israelites as they enter into the promised land, the
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Word of God must be everything. Because the Word of God is what is going to give us a love for God, where we are, as he says here in verse 4, that you shall love the
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Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength. You are not going to know that unless you hear from the
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Lord. And we only hear from the Lord in His Word. To quote a friend of mine, a well -known quote, if you've heard it or know him, if you want to hear from God, everyone nowadays, they say they hear from God, God speaks to them.
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If you want to hear from God, I can tell you one way to hear from God. Read the Bible. If you'd like to hear
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God audibly, read the Bible aloud. During the days of the
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Puritans, reading the Bible was not just a duty, but a delight that shaped their entire worldview.
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They believed that Scripture was the lens through which to interpret all of life's realities.
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The historical perspective highlights the transforming power of Scripture in guiding decisions and shaping hearts, demonstrating the vital role it plays in every believer's life today.
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As we enter into a new year, may you take a different perspective on the
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Word of God. Don't just read it. Meditate upon it.
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As we get into a new year with a new Bible study reading plan for the church, I encourage all of us to be involved in that study, whether you do it in the
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Bible app or do it on your own, but engage with that. The reason I encourage you to do the
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Bible app is because we get into some discussions there. And so get into the
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Bible reading plan that we have. But then don't just say, hey, I got Saturday and Sunday off. No, the reason that Pastor Dan has chosen this one is so that on Saturday and Sunday, take the time out to engage more deeply with the passages that we read through the week so that we wouldn't just read the
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Scripture. May we live the Scripture. Let us pray.
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Lord, we come before you and we ask that this new year would be different for every one of us.
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That we would take the words of Moses to the Israelites as they entered into the land, serious to realize that your
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Word is everything we need for faith and practice. That we would look to your Word and see it as what we need for every decision.
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That we would see it as the lens through which we look at all of life. But Lord, may it be something that this year, more than any other year maybe, that we would look to your
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Word and be in awe of you. That we would be amazed at the promises we see in your
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Word for us. That we would know you better, love you more, want to live for you more, and see a love for you so much that the things of this earth would grow strangely dim as we desire to be with you more and more through the reading of your
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Word. So no matter what life throws at us, whatever trials we have, that we would look to you and have a greater appreciation to be with you because your
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Word has taught us that with you everything is better. That you know what you're doing and even if things look like they're awry in this world, we know you are in full control.
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And Lord, I ask that if there's any here who do not know you, maybe they've been going to church all their life.
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Maybe they think coming to church made them a Christian or being raised in a Christian home. But they've never repented, they've never turned in their thinking from trusting themselves to trusting you.
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May you bring them to repentance where they sit right now. Bring them to a knowledge that they rightfully deserved eternity in a lake of fire.
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May you bring them to repentance to realize that you are the only one that did the work that can save them.
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And that they may have a changed life, a changed heart right where they sit. And for those of us who do know you,
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Lord, may we cherish your Word. It may take this year to live differently in our approach to your
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Word. For your honor and your glory. And all God's people say, Amen.