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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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Hey, you are watching A Year in the Bible with Daily Grace. This is Shelby and Paul, and we're here to walk you through Deuteronomy chapters 7 through 9. Take it away, Paul.
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A
Yeah, so in these chapters, we're going to get some instructions from Moses about how the Israelites are supposed to live in the promised land. And one of the most important commands that he's giving them is that when. When they get there, they're supposed to conquer all the people that live there and especially not take on any of their practices or worship any of the gods that they worship. And, you know, already this is kind of can be a bit thorny for our modern minds about, you know, conquering and killing everyone that they find there. Right. But thankfully, Scripture kind of gives us a bit of an answer of why God is commanding this. And it's in Deuteronomy 9. 4, where it says, when the Lord your God drives them out before you, do not say to yourself, the Lord brought me in to take possession of this land because of my righteousness. Instead, the Lord will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness. And so this is a command to Israel to say, hey, it's not because you're special that you're winning these battles. Right. It's because of the wickedness of the people that are there. And we'll talk more about this kind of difficult concept of conquest in Joshua. But, you know, this kind of gives us a little precursor to what we're going to see there.
- [01:28]
B
Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. And I know we'll talk about this a lot more because we're going to see this take place in the book of Joshua. So what do we learn from God's instructions in these chapters?
- [01:39]
A
Yeah, so I think these chapters show us something that's pretty important about the Bible in general and not just Deuteronomy. And that's something I've heard said before, which is basically that the Bible always gives the indicative before it gives the imperative. And all of that really means is that God is going to tell us who we are before he tells us what we're supposed to do. And we saw this in Exodus, namely where God basically delivered them from slavery before they had done anything. Right. There was nothing that the Israelites had done. And earlier in Deuteronomy, we actually saw that God said, you know, I chose you, not because you were great, but because, you know, I loved you. And so he tells them, hey, you're my people. And so now in Deuteronomy and also in the law that we got prior to Deuteronomy, he's telling them what to do. And, you know, they're supposed to live in a certain way, and this carries with it certain blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. But those blessings and curses have nothing to do with whether they are his people. They are secured as his people the moment that they receive his salvation.
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B
Yeah. And I know the study content for this day mentions that the same is true for us. Right?
- [02:50]
A
Yeah, that's right. And, you know, it makes me honestly think about a part of my story. When I was in seminary, I kind of felt called by God to do gospel ministry. And that was really exciting. But all throughout my time in seminary, you know, I continued to struggle with sin because I'm human. And, you know, obviously I would, you know, do my best to fight that, but there was always this voice in the back of my mind that was just telling me, you know, God's going to take away this call. You're going to screw up and mess up, and you're just. He's not going to deem you worthy anymore. Right. But, you know, I have to remind myself that God is using the call that he places on our lives, both as Christians and maybe for a specific thing like ministry, to sanctify us, to make us more like him through the process of that identity that he's given us. Right. So he tells me, hey, you're called for ministry. And then over time, he has slowly made me into someone who's prepared for that ministry. And I'm still a work in progress. You know, I absolutely haven't arrived until the day I die. I'll be growing, but, you know, it's such an important reminder for me that, you know, Christ already paid the penalty for our sins, and so who we are in him is secure forever. And we can constantly return to that whenever we feel ourselves being badgered by, you know, our conscience.
- [04:06]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for sharing that story, Paul. I think anyone can relate to that story for sure. And I think my takeaway from these chapters is. I don't know about you, but I have, like, this. I think you'd maybe just described it, but like, this internal dial that's kind of like, God loves me more, God loves me less, like, kind of based on how I'm doing. And I think today what I discovered is, like, that dial is like, permanently stuck at, like, God loves me completely. And so. So I think that's. That's a takeaway I have from these chapters. And I know we mentioned the studies earlier. If you are not using the A Year in the Bible Bible Studies to follow along with us, we encourage you to check those out. We can link them in the show notes for you. And if you're not watching on YouTube, check out these episodes on YouTube. You can listen to them on a podcast app or you can also watch them on YouTube. So we're excited to continue walking through the rest of Deuteronomy in all of those formats with you. We'll see you tomorrow.