Daily Thought

The nearness of God was a distinct privilege of Israel. They were His people, and He was their God. As a result, they could in everything call upon Him. If that was true for Israel, how much more so for God’s people today! In everything we too can call upon Him.

God’s Nearness. The emphasis in the passage is upon God’s nearness to His people. In the light of God having come near to them, Moses exhorts Israel to remember three things. Wisdom, understanding, and calling upon God, centres in hearing and doing the statutes and ordinances which he had taught them. He calls for attentive hearing to what they had been taught. It was vital to Israel for them to value and obey the word of God, putting into practice in its entirety all they had learned. Moses commanded they were not to add to, nor take from, the word of God. They were not to tamper with divine truth under any circumstances.

God’s Intervention. Israel are directed back to God’s intervention in the past. Moses said their personal preservation at Baal-Peor was linked with their cleaving ‘unto the Lord your God’. To them, the sober message of Baal-Peor was fidelity to God preserves life. Failure and sin left twenty-four thousand empty places in the families of Israel. Moses further impresses upon the people that if obedience to God’s word was paramount in the wilderness, it will be so when they enter the land of promise.

God’s Principles. The principles of God never alter. They may be expanded with further revelation, but not altered. For Israel, wisdom, understanding, and calling upon God, who had come near to them, resulted from hearkening and doing the statutes and judgements.

Those same principles continue in their application today. The Christian has the privilege of knowing that God has drawn near, but to call upon Him in everything, makes the same demands upon us as upon Israel. God’s word in its entirety is not to be tampered with, but obeyed and acted upon.