http://gospeltranslations.org/w/index.php?title=For_the_Love_of_God,_Volume_1/June_26&feed=atom&action=historyFor the Love of God, Volume 1/June 26 - Revision history2024-03-28T13:29:16ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.16alphahttp://gospeltranslations.org/w/index.php?title=For_the_Love_of_God,_Volume_1/June_26&diff=20007&oldid=prevJoyaTeemer: Protected "For the Love of God, Volume 1/June 26" ([edit=sysop] (indefinite) [move=sysop] (indefinite))2010-08-04T16:42:03Z<p>Protected "<a href="/wiki/For_the_Love_of_God,_Volume_1/June_26" title="For the Love of God, Volume 1/June 26">For the Love of God, Volume 1/June 26</a>" ([edit=sysop] (indefinite) [move=sysop] (indefinite))</p>
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</table>JoyaTeemerhttp://gospeltranslations.org/w/index.php?title=For_the_Love_of_God,_Volume_1/June_26&diff=20006&oldid=prevJoyaTeemer: Created page with '{{info}} ====JUNE 26==== ''Deuteronomy 31; Psalm 119:97-120''; Isaiah 58; Matthew 6 REFLECT FOR A MOMENT on the rich and diverse means that God granted to Israel to help them ...'2010-08-04T16:41:58Z<p>Created page with '{{info}} ====JUNE 26==== ''Deuteronomy 31; Psalm 119:97-120''; Isaiah 58; Matthew 6 REFLECT FOR A MOMENT on the rich and diverse means that God granted to Israel to help them ...'</p>
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====JUNE 26====<br />
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''Deuteronomy 31; Psalm 119:97-120''; Isaiah 58; Matthew 6<br />
<br />
REFLECT FOR A MOMENT on the rich and diverse means that God granted to Israel<br />
to help them remember what he had done to deliver them, and the nature of the<br />
covenant they had pledged themselves to obey.<br />
<br />
There was the tabernacle itself (later the temple), with its carefully prescribed<br />
rites and feasts: the covenant was not an abstract philosophical system, but was<br />
reflected in regular religious ritual. The nation was constituted in such a way that<br />
the Levites were distributed amongst the other tribes, and the Levites had the task<br />
of teaching the Law to the rest of the people. The three principal high feasts were<br />
designed to gather the people to the central tabernacle or temple, where both the<br />
ritual and the actual reading of the Law were to serve as powerful reminders<br />
('''Deut. 31:11'''). From time to time God sent specially endowed judges and<br />
prophets, who called the people back to the covenant. Families were carefully<br />
taught how to pass on the inherited history to their children, so that new generations<br />
that had never seen the miraculous display of God’s power at the time of<br />
the Exodus would nevertheless be fully informed of it and own it as theirs.<br />
Moreover, blessings from God would attend obedience, and judgment from God<br />
would attend disobedience, so that the actual circumstances of the community<br />
were supposed to elicit reflection and self-examination. Legislation was passed to<br />
foster a sense of separateness in the fledgling nation, erecting certain barriers so<br />
that the people would not easily become contaminated by the surrounding paganism.<br />
Unique events, like the antiphonal shouting at Mounts Gerizim and Ebal at<br />
the time of entering the land (see June 22 meditation), were supposed to foster<br />
covenant fidelity in the national memory.<br />
<br />
But now God adds one more device. Precisely because God knows that in due<br />
course the people will rebel anyway, he instructs Moses to write a song of telling<br />
power that will become a national treasure—and a sung testimony against themselves<br />
(''31:19-22''). Someone has said, “Let me write the songs of a nation, and I<br />
care not who writes its laws.” The aphorism is overstated, of course, but insightful<br />
nonetheless. That is the purpose of the next chapter, Deuteronomy 32. The<br />
Israelites will learn, as it were, a national anthem that will speak against them if<br />
they shut down all the other God-given calls to remember and obey.<br />
<br />
What devices, in both Scripture and history, has God graciously given to help<br />
the heirs of the new covenant remember and obey? Meditate on them. How have<br />
you used them? What songs do we sing to put this principle into practice, that<br />
''teach'' the people of God matters of irrevocable substance beyond mere<br />
sentimentalism?</div>JoyaTeemer