Dear Trekker,
Several years ago a good friend gave me a “one-year Bible” in the Living Translation. It included a daily Old Testament and New Testament reading, a selection from Psalms and a Proverb or two. One reads the OT and Proverbs in a year, the NT and Psalms twice throughout the year. So this month is about precept and process.
In the succeeding years after receipt, I have used this “plan” for daily reading somewhat regularly. It works! Over time, one understands God better, grasps well the whole and flow of sacred Scripture and discovers “the key to living life” on planet earth. If you are not reading the Old and New “Testaments” regularly, I invite and encourage you to do so. May I say, you should?
While in the Book of Deuteronomy recently, I discovered, as if for the first time, how relevant the OT is for us today. Not that the Mosaic covenant God made with the Jews is pertinent to us as it was to them when made thousands of years ago. It is not! Yet, God yesterday, today and forever is predictable. What is “lasting” about God and man’s relationship to his Creator is the eternal, intended relationships with each other… not in specifics, but most surely in principled relationships within time and eternity. The Old Testament is chock full of such “principled relationships.” As surely as the Mosaic Law was limited to a time and a nation God made special because He chose to do so, living timeless truths of the Old Testament for all of us, are not.
My thinking was sharpened while reading in Deuteronomy 5. Deuteronomy is the second time (Deutero literally means second and nomy means law) the law was given to the Hebrews. First to Moses at Sinai… then after 40 years of wandering and the first generation gone, a new generation takes “the promised land” under Joshua. These are covenantal principles as to how the Hebrews were to live in order to fulfill the promise to Abraham, “I will bless all nations through you” (Genesis 12:1-3).
The morning I read Deuteronomy 5, timeless principles for anyone to live by leaped off the printed page. Moses speaks, “Hear, O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today, learn them and be sure to follow them.” The Old Testament is not men seeking to know if there is a God or not, it is the great “I AM” revealing Himself by decree. (It is as if He was saying… This is the way it is, whether you believe it or not, so listen up; you must follow to see the decree realized.) Then… “Learn them and follow them.” Could anything be more universally true then this? We must learn unchangeable truth principles from the “mouth” of God and follow them. Learn and follow is immutable!
Anything concerning pleasing God is not an intellectual exercise… it is a life activity (the follow through of obedience and teaching principle) to be taught to each succeeding generation. These words of Moses are most insightful (v 2-3): “The Lord made a covenant with us at Mount Horeb. It was not just with our fathers that the Lord made the covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today.” How reassuring… the God beyond time and space speaks into time and space for all mankind’s profit (past, present, future). This underscores the timelessness of Old Testament writings.
Moses continues quoting God (v 6): “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery.” We all are brought out of somewhere. And somewhere usually suggests bondage to someone or something, separating us from God, alone. True slavery is always slavery to sin, i.e. separation from desiring and “being able” to love God with heart, mind, soul and strength.
If “all Scripture is inspired by God,” as it surely is, then it is His love story to us. (And when St. Paul penned these words, he meant the OT… nothing more.) Men penned the words of sacred writings, but only as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, did they write. The Old Testament emphatically reveals God’s initiative, reality and provision, just as the New Testament follows through with this Divine trilogy to restore man to and in His eternal Presence. And all for the timeless, permanent, transcendent purpose “… that their hearts would be inclined to fear (respect, honor, praise, follow, love, obey) me and keep all the commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever” (Deuteronomy 5:29).
Oh, the clinching words of God’s intent: “So be careful to do what the Lord your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or the left. Walk in all the way the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land you will possess” (Deuteronomy 5:32-33). God gives, we must possess… but we must live God’s way!
Not surprising then a few phrases later (Chapter 6), Moses says: “Hear, O Israel (and I might add all of us Gentiles who have been grafted into Israel, His Body, His “Church”) the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Jesus repeated those words in the New Testament. Why? Because they are universally true… then, now and always. “These commandments that I (Moses) give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home when you lie down and when you get up” (Chapter 6: 6-7).
God’s truth… timeless, pulsating throughout the Old Testament, and repeated in the New, as God Himself breaks into the human cycle! The sacred Scriptures have but one story… one God creating, loving, and redeeming all peoples. Let’s not break the continuity by putting too much time or space between these two testaments! It’s one love story: God so loved that He gave! And He will never stop giving. It is His nature!
Be encouraged, trekker, as you read the Old Testament as well as the New. His Word is for the world in every age.
Your friend,
Jim Meredith
