“Basic Requirements” – FBC Morning Light(3/4/2024)

Well, a good Monday morning to you. I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and the Lord blessed you as you gathered with God's people yesterday and worshiped him. Well, today in our Bible reading, we're reading in Deuteronomy chapters 9 to 11.

The Simple Requirements God Asks of His People

In fact, we'll be in the book of Deuteronomy all this week. But I want to focus on a passage, a couple of verses in chapter 10. You know, when you read the Bible, it can seem overwhelming with all of the, maybe the specific things that, you know, you learn that would please God.

And to especially a younger believer, it can all seem so complex, so overwhelming. But these couple of verses I'm going to look at in chapter 10 show us that what God's essential requirements are really quite simple.

Now I didn't say easy, but they're simple to understand. And all that God requires of us is summarized in five simple statements. They're in the form of an infinitive, you know, to do this, okay? So let's look at Deuteronomy 10 and verse 12.

It says, and now Israel, what does the Lord require of you? And here it is. But number one, to fear the Lord your God, to fear him, to hold him up in the highest esteem, respect, adoration, honor, recognition of his power and authority, and even his right to punish, to chasten, to correct, to fear him.

There's a measure of reverence there. There's the idea of fearing as one would fear a good father. So, to fear the Lord. Secondly, he says, to walk in all his ways, to walk in all his ways. We're basically given in this life two options for how we conduct our lives, where we get our cues, where we get our directions.

We can get our directions from the things we read in this world, the things that we see on television, the influence of the culture all around us. Those things, you know, we don't even have to pay attention to.

We're just bombarded with direction from the world and how to live our lives. The other option is to get our cues, our direction, from God, from his word, and to walk in his ways. Really, the question here in these things that God requires of us has to do with the bent of our heart.

Is the bent of our heart to fear God or to ignore him? Is the bent of our heart to walk in all of his ways or to get our directions and how to walk from the culture, the world around us? The third statement is to love him, to love him.

Now, that's not primarily calling for an emotional response. There can be and there will be emotion involved in loving God, don't misunderstand. But we think of love on purely an emotional level. But the biblical concept of love has to do with a matter of conscious choice, of choosing him, and the emotions of choosing him, they follow along with that choice.

So it's to love God and hate idols, to turn to God and turn away from idols. To love him is to choose him above all others. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means to choose him above all others.

He is primary. He is premier. He is the ultimate one to whom I am devoted in this life. To love him. The fourth thing is to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Now, we think of service, we might think of a waiter at a restaurant who's serving you or some other kind of menial task.

But what this word communicates has more to do with the matter of worship, and our worshiping of God with all of our heart and with all of our soul. So for example, in the 100th Psalm, we're told to come into his presence with singing to serve the Lord, serve the Lord with gladness, serve the Lord with gladness.

It's not talking so much about working as it is about worship. That whole psalm has to do with our worship of God. So we worship the Lord our God with all of our heart and with all of our soul. Isn't that really kind of what Jesus said?

The Lord is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth? And then the last thing is to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command you today, Moses says to Israel, to keep his commandments, to obey him.

So these five exhortations, these five infinitives, summarize in a very simple way what the Lord requires of us to fear him, to walk in his ways, to love him, to serve him, and to obey him, to keep his commandments.

So what is the bent of our heart? There's the question. What is the bent of our heart? Is the bent of our heart in these five directions to fulfill these basic requirements, or is our heart bent toward the other direction, away from these things?

Well, I trust this helps us to just have a brief summary in our mind of, you know, what does the Lord require of me? So, Father, help us to keep these things in our mind and in our heart, refer back to them frequently from time to time, and do some self-reflection, and we pray for your wisdom and guidance in that process.

Thank you, Father, for this time this morning. Bless these things to our hearts, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, listen, have a wonderful Monday. Hope your week gets off to a great start.

First full week of March. Lord bless you in it.