Deuteronomy 11

The life of loving the Lord God in this present age is a battle. The people of God can expect continual assaults urging us with every enticement that can be imagined, sometimes whispering and sometimes screaming, “Take me instead of your God! Why do you have to be different? Why not satisfy your flesh now?”

We need to turn away from evil and love the Lord our God with all our hearts. This battle that the church faces today was also the battle of Israel when they were preparing to take the land. The temptations they would face would be urged upon them by the example of those who were in the land already. There would also be an inner enemy in their own flesh, and a legion of voices from the devil and his allies pressing them to find their satisfaction in everything that was perishing, and not in God.

As an inducement in the direction of faithful obedience, Moses urged the Israelites to remember the power of God in judgment against the Egyptians and even against the wilderness generation of Israel that perished in the desert. As they now prepared to go into the promised land, this was no time for half measures. They needed to keep the whole commandment of the Lord.

The chorus of inner and outer voices, both then and now, would continually suggest that keeping the whole commandment of the Lord is too extreme. But wasn't it worse to have the earth open up and swallow the arrogant?

The Israelites also needed to consider the goodness of the Lord's gift to them in the land of Canaan. Moses reminded the people of the Lord's promise of great blessings in the land if the whole community of faith would follow the commandments of the Lord.

The conquest generation was to bind the Law of God upon their bodies. We also must remember the Word of the Lord ourselves and teach this Word to our children. We must continually seek the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, for Christ has sent this good gift upon His church.

Moses reminded the conquest generation of the blessing and the curse of God. We remind ourselves today that our Redeemer has come. He has taken our curse and has granted us an eternal hope. The Lord's warfare for holiness in our life is not yet over. The battle is on, but the victory belongs to the Lord.