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Deuteronomy 9:1-3 (focus verse 3a) (NIV)  But be assured today that the Lord your God is the One who goes across ahead of you.  Transitions in life always bring a certain amount of anxiety, a need for reassurance.  Here on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, Moses alerted the Children of Israel to the realities ahead.  Yes, the people were stronger.  Yes, the cities had walls  “up to the sky” (NIV).  Yes, they had heard the stories about nobody…

Deuteronomy 8:11 (NIV)  Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe His commands, His laws, and His decrees that I am giving you this day.  Moses reminds Israel to keep the commandments (the moral law in regard to themselves) and the ordinances (the civil law in regard to others) and the statutes (the ceremonial law in regard to God).  Our relationships with others are crucial because God created us to be social people.  He…

Deuteronomy 8:2-10 (focus verse 2a) (NIV)  Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way…  Here is the big picture of what really happened over those 40 years in the wilderness.  God led and humbled and tested His people (v. 2).  God fed them and taught them (vs. 3).  God preserved them and disciplined them (vs. 4-5).  I wonder what your testimony will be when you get to the end of your life and look back over your…

Deuteronomy 7:6 (NIV)  For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.  The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.  This verse goes on to show how God would honor Israel’s obedience to Him by: His blessing on their domestic life (7:12-16) and with victory over naturally impossible difficulties (7:17-26).  Have you experienced surprising blessings at various points throughout your lifetime…

Deuteronomy 6:3  Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.  Moses exhorts Israel to: 1) give the word of God a central place in the home (6:6-9); 2) not forget the Lord in the time of prosperity (6:10-12); 3) order their lives according to God’s principles of…

Deuteronomy 5:22 (NIV)  These are the commandments the Lord proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud, and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more.  Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.  God spoke out of the fire, out of the cloud, and out of thick darkness (deep gloom, RSV).  His word came in spoken form and in written form.  Have…

Deuteronomy 5:1 (NIV)  Moses summoned all Israel and said:  “Hear, O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today.  Learn them and be sure to follow them.  The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.  It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with all, with all of us who are alive here today.”  Moses was repeating the Law of God to a generation which had grown up in…

Matthew 4:23 (NIV)  Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.  Christ’s miracles drew multitudes.  People listened to Him as long as they saw miracles.  But later in His ministry, as He drew near to the cross, He performed fewer miracles and preached more about discipleship.  Once, after his message on the high cost of discipleship, many followers walked away (John 6).  He turned…

Isaiah 66:1-2 (NIV)  This is what the Lord says:  “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool…This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.”   The heaven is His throne and the earth is His footstool; yet, God chooses to live in the hearts of humble believers who faithfully obey His Word.  Think of it!  His greatest delight is you!  In a world filled with doubt, sarcasm…

Isaiah 55:10-11 (NIV)  As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  What a wonderful metaphor for the…

Isaiah 55:3 (NIV)  Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live… This passage speaks of spiritual poverty and thirst (vs. 1).  We live such hectic lives that all too often we overlook our deep inner hunger for God.  We forget how much we need Him.  We invest so much of our time and energy in things that do not have eternal value.  God invites us to come empty handed to His table of provision.  There…

Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)  They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.   “Weary and faint persons can face the difficulties of life when they live in God, for they are renewed in their strength by the Creator’s limitless strength” (Hayford Bible Handbook).  Patient waiting, done in God’s presence, produces quiet confidence.  He will trigger peace and…

Exodus 20:8 (NIV)  Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  “The Sabbath is a way of defying slavery.  Slaves, by definition, cannot stop working.  Sabbath is living in such as way that we are no longer slaves.  The Israelites had spent 300 years or so assimilating into the dominant cultural value system of Egypt.  Generations had succumbed to never ceasing from work.  It was normal to work all the time.  The bustling and ever-increasing economy of Egypt demanded nonstop…

Proverbs 3:13 (NIV) Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding.  Are we listening for the Lord’s direction and clarification?  “One of the striking characteristics seen in effective leaders is their drive to learn from all kinds of sources.”  Effective leaders maintain a learning/listening posture throughout life.  “The Bible is the leadership anchor.  A Christian leader bases values, methodology, motivation, and goals on what God has revealed in Scripture.” (Clinton, The Making of a Leader).  God…

Acts 10:28b (NLT)  …But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean.  At the Global Leadership Summit 2019, Danielle Strickland described five stages of transition: 1) Settled (feels good); 2) Unsettled (stressful disruption); 3) Chaos (you’ve left what you know but aren’t to the new place yet—it is scary, yet exciting); 4) Arrival at the new place (but doesn’t feel like home); and 5) the new normal (finally).  The journey from stage…

Hebrews 3:15-19 (The Message)  For who were the people who turned a deaf ear?  Weren’t they the very ones Moses led out of Egypt?…Wasn’t it those who turned a deaf ear and ended up corpses in the wilderness?  They never got there because they never listened, never believed.   “People in recovery circles use some very helpful phrases to describe the kind of behavior that keeps us from experiencing freedom (or for settling for external freedom while still experiencing slavery…

John 3:30 (KJV)  He must increase, but I must decrease.   Our great heroes of the faith lived through some kind of desert experience—an emptying place.  The devil is ok with us  “leaving Egypt” as long as we bring all of Egypt’s values and systems with us.  He lets us be a Christian as long as we live like everyone else, full of ourselves.  Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus emptied Himself in order to embrace His calling to save…

Luke 22:31-32a (NIV)  “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.  But I have prayed for you…  “Quality leadership does not come easily.  It requires time, experience, and repeated instances of maturity processing.”  Such was the experience of the disciples as they followed Jesus.  There was much to learn.  They thought that proximity to Jesus was enough.  But  “Mature ministry flows from a mature character, formed in the graduate school of life…a leader whose ministry skills outstrip his…

Deuteronomy 4:32-40 (focus verse 39b) The Lord is God both in heaven and on earth, and there is no other.   Read this entire passage in the NIV or NLT version.  It is powerful.  Oh, that we would see God for who He truly is!  How has He been faithful in your life?  What has He brought you out of and into?  How have you seen His  “outstretched arm” and  “awesome deeds”?  How have you heard His voice?  How has…

Deuteronomy 4:29-31 (focus verse 29 NLT)  But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and with all your soul.   God knew the days would come when Israel would go astray and want to be like the other nations who had a king, who lived apart from the laws of God.  Their resistance to God would lead to the loss of His overshadowing protection, the…

Deuteronomy 4:15-28 (focus verse 23 NIV)  Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden.  Moses warned Israel against the dangers of idolatry and its consequences.  In our day it is astonishing to see people bowing down to worship before man-made images, “gods of wood and stone which cannot see or hear or eat…

Deuteronomy 4:1-2 (NIV) Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you.  Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.  Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.  Continued possession of the Promised Land was contingent…

Deuteronomy 3:27a-28 (NLT)  …Take a good look, but you may not cross the Jordan River.  Instead, commission Joshua and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead the people across the Jordan.  He will give them all the land you now see before you as their possession.  Joshua’s confidence for his mission rested on three realities: 1) It was a holy charge, a divine commission; 2) God’s faithful performance in the past provided courage for the future; and 3) God…

Deuteronomy 3:19-20 (focus verse 20b)  After that, each man may return to the land I’ve given you here.   God was instructing the people:  “Go to battle for your brothers and help them win their land on that side of the Jordan, THEN you can settle down into this land on this side of the Jordan—your wives and children and livestock will be here waiting for you.”  What does this teach us?  “We are not to rest content with our…

Deuteronomy 3:18b (NLT)  …all your able-bodied men, armed for battle, must cross over ahead of your brother Israelites…  “Courage is not enough, we need to be adequately  ‘armed.’”  We must be biblically literate.  We must be socially engaged.  We must be filled with the Spirit.  We must be alert to cultural shifts.  We must be intuitive to peoples’  hearts.  If the Kingdom of God is to expand, we are His soldiers and we must be armed appropriately.  Are you involved…

Deuteronomy 3:2-4 (focus verse 4 NIV)  The Lord said to me, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have handed him over to you with his whole army and his land…”   The conquest of Canaan rested on the promises of God but did not exclude human exertion.  “Complete victory can be achieved only by complete obedience.  Defeating an enemy is not sufficient in itself; the promised possession must also be claimed and occupied.”  God’s goal for us goes…

Deuteronomy 3:11 (NIV)  …His bed was made of iron and was more than 13 feet long and 6 feet wide…  What is the purpose of this information?  The purpose is to underscore the reality that this man was a real giant.  Knowing this helps us to understand the magnitude of God’s victory.  The older generation was terrified by the size of their enemies.  The new generation would conquer them in the power of a God who was greater.  What is…

Deuteronomy 2:24b (NLT)  “…begin to take possession of it…”   The metaphor of conquering enemies and taking new ground, as described in Israel’s historic entry into Canaan, applies to us today.  Externally, evil finds expression through broken humanity.  We confront and conquer evil by allowing God’s Spirit to find expression through us. I nternally, we war against an inherited force that the Apostle Paul calls the  “old nature,” and it drives us to the lusts of the flesh, lusts of…

Deuteronomy 2:13-15 (focus verse 13 NIV)  “And the Lord said, “Now get up and cross the Zered Valley.” So we crossed the valley.”  It took only eleven days to travel the distance from Kadesh-Barnea to  “this side Jordan” (1:2), but it took 38 more years for the final group of unbelieving Israelites to die.  God would take into the Promised Land only those with firm faith.  The first generation had stood at the border of the Promised Land wailing in…

Deuteronomy 2:7 (NIV)  The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands.  He has watched over your journey through this vast desert.  These forty years the Lord your God has been with you, and you have not lacked anything.  God knows when we are going through the  “wilderness”  experiences in life.  He is present with us on this long walk to our divine destiny.  When we fail miserably, He can sustain us—even when the wilderness…

Deuteronomy 1:39-46 (NLT focus verse 40) …turn around and set out toward the desert…“  Oh, the tragedy of these words! What must we learn from Israel?  “A later obedience to an earlier command does not necessarily compensate for a prior disobedience.  Presumption is not faith.”

Deuteronomy 1:33 (NIV)  (The Lord your God) went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.  Moses reviewed Israel’s history and  “impressed the new generation with the failings of the old in order to induce them to keep God’s laws.”  Their forefathers had failed miserably at Kadesh; and only those who  “wholly followed the Lord,”…

Deuteronomy 1:1-46 (NIV focus verse 29-31)  …”Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them.  The Lord you God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as He did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert.  There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.”   Those of us who have walked with the Lord…

Deuteronomy 4:1 (NLT)  “And now, Israel, listen carefully to these decrees and regulations that I am about to teach you.  Obey them so that you may live, so you may enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.”  The key word in Deuteronomy is OBEDIENCE.  Moses’  closing appeal to Israel was meant to  “keep inviolate the Covenant of the Lord in order to insure their continued well-being.”  Their ability to live in…

Deuteronomy 1:8 (NIV)  “Look, I am giving all this land to you!  Go in and occupy it, for it is the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors…”   Here on the cusp of the Promised Land and just one month before entering it, Moses gave the word of the Lord to the Israelites.  It was a series of discourses that repeated the Law to a generation which had been born and had grown up in the wilderness…

Exodus 40:34-38 (compare to Ex. 1:1-22) In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted.  So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.  “The book begins with the gloom…

Exodus 35:1 – 40:33 (NLT focus verse 1) Moses assembled the whole Israelite community and said to them, “These are the things the Lord has commanded you to do…”  “Access to God is obtained only by God’s provision, not by man’s effort.  Acceptable worship must conform to God’s standards, not to man’s ideas (John 4:24).”  Like Cain, do we bring to God what we want to bring to Him or, like Abel, do we simply obey? (Gen. 4).  There is…

Exodus 34:28-35 (NIV focus verse 35)  …and the people of Israel would see the radiant glow of his (Moses’) face.  So, he would put the veil over his face until he returned to speak with the Lord.  Forty days and forty nights of fasting in God’s Presence will have an impact on a person!  Rev. Walter Beutler writes: “Spending time in the presence of God imparts the glory of God which is reflected to others.”  This was true in Jesus’ …

Exodus 33:18-34:17 (NIV focus verse 6)  …The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished…   What a remarkable glimpse we have of a supernatural interaction between God and a mere man!  Moses received a new revelation of God (which he used in the interest of others – verse 34:9).  Have you experienced anything…

Exodus 33:12-17 (NIV focus verse 16)  “How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us?  What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”  Moses was  “burdened with the heavy task before Him and felt in need of assistance.  He prayed for a knowledge of God through a revelation of His ways.”  Do we seek to know the Lord and…