Deuteronomy 10:14

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 10:14-16, “Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD's thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.[15] Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.[16] Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.” The earth belongs to God and every person on this earth belongs to Him. And God does with each one what He chooses to do. Don’t ever forget that. It refers to everything that happens in your life, and it refers to everything that happens in everyone else’s life. God is in control. He raises up and casts down. He makes the final decision. God causes one thing to work out and another thing to fail. Why did the children of Israel become a nation, a powerful nation? It was God’s choice. That is what He is reminding them about. God loved them and God chose them. Think of how great a privilege and benefit it is to be the object of God’s love and attention in that way. God loves everyone, but you do not enter into that love and learn to enjoy it until you trust in Christ as Savior. Once you are the object of God’s love in only the way that a believer can be, make sure that leads you to be more surrendered to His will and His leading. That is vitally important if you are going to be led by the Great Spirit. Turn away from sin and “be no more stiffnecked.”

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 10: 17-19, “For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:[18] He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.[19] Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” God is a great Judge. What makes Him so great and so good as a Judge? It says in verse 17 that He “regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.” In other words every person is treated equally. There are no special favors. No one gets a pass because they are famous. And no one gets a pass because they are rich. No one can do what is often done in our world: buying people off.

Because God is Judge of the whole earth, He especially looks out for those who are abused or neglected or ill-treated. It says in verse 18, “He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.” A stranger is a foreigner: someone who has been displaced from their own country. Three individuals are mentioned from the situation that existed in Moses’ time who were extremely vulnerable: children without a father, widows (women who lost their husband), and people who are travelling and who are thus away from their own home. The “fatherless” referred to children whose father had died, but in our day we have many fatherless because the fathers are not with them due to broken homes and because of some men’s lack of responsibility and lack of natural affection. At least every child can learn to trust in God the Father. A child needs a father to provide, to protect, to love, to guide, and to teach him or her. Many human fathers do not do a good job at being a father even if they were involved in the life of their child, but God the Father, of course, is good at all these things and more. God is the best of all fathers. One of the reasons for the idea of a human father is to be a symbol of what God the Father is. Even if you do not have a human father in your life, you have God the Father.

Widows were in basically the same circumstance as orphans. In most of human history, a woman was almost completely dependent upon a man because of the physical prowess that was required just to survive and because of limited opportunities for women. Some of that has changed in the day in which we live, but it is still good for a woman to have a husband, of course, because that is God’s will for most people. Jesus said in Mark 10:6-9, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.[7] For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;[8] And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.[9] What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” But every marriage is temporary because every marriage ends in either death or divorce, and there is no marriage in heaven. Since women generally live longer than men, many women are going to eventually find themselves without a husband. But there is always the Lord to have a relationship with. As a matter of fact marriage symbolizes the relationship between the Lord Jesus and His believers. It says in Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;” And it also says in Ephesians 5:31-32, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.[32] This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 10:20-22, “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name.[21] He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.[22] Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.” Once again the children of Israel are told to fear God. We must never forget the law of consequences. We must never forget that God is holy and that He will punish sin. Good thing we have the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, or we would be doomed. In addition to fearing the Lord and His judgment against our sins, we must serve the Lord. When you describe yourself and what you do and why you do it, you should say, “I am a servant of the Lord Jesus. That is my priority. That is who I am. He is the Master, and I am only His lowly servant. My goal is to follow His way and His teachings, and to find every way that I can to serve Him.”

When Deuteronomy 10:20 says, “to him shalt thou cleave,” it is a good way of describing trusting in the Lord. You should be like a child clinging to its mother or its father. Or you should be like a wife clinging to her husband, or a husband clinging to his wife. It is good to know that we can grab onto the Lord and not let go of Him. That is exactly what Jacob did in wrestling with the Lord. As long as we have the attitude that we are going to reach out and cleave to the Lord and be determined to let nothing keep us from doing that, then we will find a sure reward and a safe harbor.

Once again in verses 21 and 22 the Israelites are told to remember the great things that God had done for them. We all need to do that. If you are saved from your sins through faith in the Lord Jesus, then you need nothing else for which to be eternally grateful to him. In all of your troubles and trials and difficulties, never forget that there is nothing that God cannot do. God can perform any miracle at any time. He can turn the tables. He can make things work out much differently than any human being would have ever thought. “It is no secret what God can do. What He has done for others He will do for you.” When the sons of Jacob and their families went into Egypt, there were only seventy of them; but when they came out of Egypt, they were a great nation headed for the promised land of Canaan. You might appear to be surrounded by the unbelievers, but God is able to give you victories beyond your wildest imagination.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 11:1-7, “Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway.[2] And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm,[3] And his miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land;[4] And what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the LORD hath destroyed them unto this day;[5] And what he did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into this place;[6] And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:[7] But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD which he did.” In in Deuteronomy 11:1 one once again believers are told to love God. Anything that God tells us is important, but if He tells us something over and over again, that should really get our attention. Jesus wants our love. He loves us, and He only asks that we return that love. God is love. He gives love, and He hopes to receive it in return. In reality, God does not want our money, our possessions, our talents, our time, or anything else: He wants our love. By the way, if He has our love, then He will have everything else. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” This passage in Deuteronomy says that we should love God and keep “his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, always.” Notice the word “always.” Once we believe in Jesus and start following Him, the plan and purpose and goal of our life should be to always follow Him. Do not let disappointment or difficulty, do not let your own sins or failures, do not let broken relationships, do not let sorrow or death stop you from following Jesus. Make it your goal to always follow Him no matter what. You need to be able to say as Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

The verses in Deuteronomy 11:2-7 are a reminder to the Israelites of the great actions that God had taken on their behalf and in their midst. Many things are mentioned for the Israelites to remember. It is important to keep in mind all of the things that God has done. We want to think about God so that we can fear Him, praise Him, and continue to believe in Him. It is easy to get caught up in our own busy lives, and our sorrows, and our troubles, and our work, and our entertainments and pursuits; and forget God or at least stop thinking about Jesus and what He has done for us. Jesus has done so much for every believer. We not only have our own lives and the memories of the blessings and what He has done for us, but we can also think about all the stories of the Bible and all the believers over the centuries that God has blessed. Of course, if we cannot think of anything else, we can at least remember that Jesus died for us on the cross to save us from our sins.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 11:8-10, “Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it;[9] And that ye may prolong your days in the land, which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give unto them and to their seed, a land that floweth with milk and honey.[10] For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs:” In these verses several good results are given for keeping God’s commandments. The first is strength: “that ye may be strong.” Moral, ethical, and spiritual strength are important to have in this world of weaklings. You get that strength through obeying God’s commandments, and putting them into practice in your life. The world has it backwards: they think you lose by keeping God’s commandments, but the opposite is true.

You will live longer if you obey God’s commandments. It says in verse 9, “And that ye may prolong your days in the land.” The general principle is this: the more you sin, the shorter your life will be. That truth is stated very plainly for anyone who breaks the fifth commandment. It says in Exodus 20:12, “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

The Israelites in Deuteronomy 11:8 were told to “go in and possess the land.” In other words God had something for them to do, and they would only be able to do it if they were spiritually strong. The same is true for us today. If you want to be fulfilled as a human being and accomplish whatever is God’s will for your life, then you must know Christ and live for Him in order to have the strength that only He can give. There are many benefits to being a Christian in addition to eventually living in heaven for ever. Another benefit is to be able to have the strength necessary to face the challenges of life. “Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.”

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