Description
Keeping God’s Word Close
Meditate on Deuteronomy 6:6–8 through three questions: what it reveals about history, how it s… (visit YouTube for more)
Transcript
Do you want to get to know God better? Would you like to understand truth more clearly? Here’s one way. Let’s meditate today on Deuteronomy chapter six verses six to eight: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.”
To meditate on this, we’re going to consider three questions. And the first is: what does this tell me about history? Now you may have heard of phylacteries, these small boxes that Jewish people may bind to their foreheads and strap on.
That keeps the word of God literally between their eyes as directed in this scripture. That’s taking this verse literally. And so we learn from history how important it was to God and to his people to keep the word of God close at all times.
Among the Israelites there was this strong oral tradition where the word of God was repeated and memorised. They’d memorise huge chunks of scripture, and that was part of their upbringing. It was part of their lives. How different would our lives look if we did that?
Question two. How does this affect my faith?
Well, of course, it tells us about the importance of the word of God; that we are to teach it to our children, that we are to pass on the things that we’ve learned. It’s so important that we want to make sure that the things we’ve learned about God are not lost.
And for ourselves, we want to make sure that the word of God is close to us. Do you literally have a Bible nearby at all times? Now, for many of us, if we have a Bible app on our phones, the answer is yes. But do we use that app? Do we reflect on what’s going on in our lives and go straight to the word of God with our questions?
And if we have responsibility for any young people, are we including amongst those responsibilities, the transmission of truth? In some quarters, it’s not popular to teach our faith to our children. Oh, we’re indoctrinating them, they say. But no, if we believe something is true and we do, why would we not teach that truth to our children? We’re not going to be mealy mouthed about this and say, “This might be true.”
No, we believe it is true, and so we teach it as true. To do anything else would be to deny our faith and to be hypocrites. So we teach as truth the things that we know to be true that we’ve received from God. If we don’t teach our children that such a thing as truth exists, they will never be able to make their minds up about anything really.
Question three, does this give me reason for thanks? Yes, I think it does. God has ensured that his word has been transmitted all the way through history so that we receive it ourselves.
There are vast stores of wisdom in the Word of God. And I personally don’t know what sort of state my life would’ve been in without it — certainly a disaster. And yes, I am thankful that these things were transmitted to me through my parents, through people at church, through peers and people who have gone before me in the faith.
I am grateful for all of that. I’m grateful that God has protected his word and that he champions our use of it. Because I have seen for myself what a benefit that is and what a difference, what a positive difference it makes in life.
Thank you Lord God for your word. Thank you that you remind us how good it is for us. Thank you for the instruction that we all can receive, to understand your word better and thus to understand you, God, truth itself. Amen.
