IN THIS chapter Israel are reminded of their calling: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one Lord.” It was He and He alone who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt.
This was the grand testimony entrusted to Israel in the midst of all the false gods of the heathen around. And yet how often the very thing entrusted to us is that in which we fail! In the wilderness, not long after they had come out of Egypt, Israel set up the golden calf. And when in the land idolatry was the great sin into which they fell. We cannot keep ourselves. Only in the grace that He Himself gives can any of us be faithful in the testimony God has called us to render. Apart from His grace, like Israel we too shall fail.
This same precious truth carries forward into Christianity. In 1 Corinthians 8:44As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. (1 Corinthians 8:4) we read: “there is none other God but one"; again, “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him: and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” God has been pleased to reveal Himself in three Persons. Sometimes He is manifested as the Father, sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Spirit. Jesus is God! “This is the true God and eternal life.” 1 John 5:2020And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. (1 John 5:20). So it is in Christianity we know but one God.
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” The Lord Jesus said to His own in John 14:1515If ye love me, keep my commandments. (John 14:15). “If ye love Me, keep My commandments,” but here God demanded that the people love Him with all their heart, with all their soul and with all their might — a thing they could not do unless they were born again. How impossible then for a natural man to get blessing under the law, and yet how wonderful to be delivered from the law altogether and to know God revealed in Christ as “the God of all grace” (1 Pet. 5:1010But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:10)). “We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:1919We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19).
On Israel’s obedience depended their blessings — their life, their health, the fruit of their land, their flocks, and herd, and vineyards, and all that they had.
The Lord said they were to keep all His words in their hearts, and to teach them to their children. His words were to be the subject of their talk when they were sitting in their houses, when they walked about, when they lay down and when they got up.
They were to be bound as signs upon their hands to guide them what to do, as frontlets between their eyes to guide their feelings and thoughts and in what they were to look at. They were to write them upon the posts of their doors and on their gates so they could never go in or out without seeing God’s words on every side of them.
The Word of God should govern our whole pathway. He would have His people ever thinking of Him. He knows that nothing else will make us so happy or so blessed.
ML-12/15/1974