Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Year 4, Day 168: Deuteronomy 17

Theological Commentary: Click Here 


Discipleship Focus: Provision

  • Provision: God gives us what we truly need.  God knows our needs better than we can know them.  We learn to trust God to provide for us.

I seem to be in a mood lately to write much on the topic of provision.  But I really shouldn’t be surprised at this.  As Moses is given this farewell speech, it makes sense that he would focus on topics like provision.  The Hebrew people are about to go from wandering nomads to inheritors of a fertile land.  They need this advice or they will stumble and fall away from God.  Which, for the record, they do anyway.

The second half of this chapter is truly all about this idea of provision.  Moses tells people that the king should not acquire too many horses or too many women and that the king needs to write his own personal copy of the Law.  All of these speak to what drives our life.

You see, in order for a king to collect many horses, he’ll need to be wealthy.  He’ll have to make acquiring money a primary objective of his empire.  In order for a king to acquire more than one wife – or worse, a whole harem – they will need to have both wealth and lust for more than they need.  Kings with wealth and harems lead to societies where greed and hoarding are valued.  Such societies are corrupt and self-serving.  God does not want people who think only of themselves.

Rather, God wants us to trust in His provision.  God wants us to remember that all that we have comes from Him.  He wants us to remember that He can supply us of all our needs better than we can supply them to ourselves.  He doesn’t want us amassing wealth and creating corrupt societies of self-service.  When we keep ourselves lean we are far more likely to remember that God is the origin of a truly satisfying and sustaining life.


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