This morning I started reading ahead to next Sunday's Old Testament lesson. In Deuteronomy (chapters 6, 8, 11 and 32) Moses tells the Israelites that they need to remember the Lord and all His blessings. The Lord delivered them out of Egypt (40 years earlier) and provided them with manna every day during those years...that was 12,514 times (not including the Sabbath) and fed them those 14,600 days (including the Sabbath)!
By the time of these chapters, all the older members of the tribes of Israel have died (except Joshua and Caleb) and all of their iniquities and longing to return to Egypt have been removed from their hearts as a people.
Now, when Moses tells them to remember the Lord their God, he impresses upon them how serious it is for their own safety and well-being as well as their posterity. For them personally, Moses tells them that if they leave the ways of the Lord they will be destroyed. He also tells them that if they let their sons and daughters marry with the other nations around them (seven of them, all larger than Israel) that their righteous ways will be turned from the Lord to worldly ways. Not good.
Moses really, really wants the Israelites to remember the Lord so he has them put scriptures (rolled up and put in little chests) on their foreheads, on their left hands and on their door posts. Man, talk about a continual reminder!
What a great reminder to keep the things of the Lord continually before our eyes. The lesson has a great set of related questions:
Why do you think Moses told the people to place passages of scripture between their eyes, on their hands, on the posts of their houses, and on their gates? How would such constant reminders affect our actions? What can we do in our homes to remind us of the Lord, his words, and our covenants with him? Do the pictures on our walls, the books we read, and the movies and television shows we watch remind us of the Lord, or do they suggest a longing for the world? (Lesson 17)
There is another part of the lesson that I really like. Moses taught the Israelites that if they ever got in a battle with any of the (larger) nations around them that the Israelites would prevail and not to worry about being a smaller force because the Lord was with them. In victory, they were to burn everything they came across, which included all the buildings, idols and everything else they encountered. If they took any spoils of war and kept them, they would be destroyed. Don't do it, House of Israel (that includes us in the latter days)!
