Tuesday

12-March

Deuteronomy 7-8; Ps 31 Luke 14

Deuteronomy 7: What are the Israelites to fear, and what are they not to fear?  Will victory be immediate? Why or why not?

Deuteronomy 8: What do you find interesting in interesting in verses 3-5? What does God warn them against in verses 11-17?

Luke 14: What do you find interesting about verse 1? Why did Jesus tell the parable of the wedding feast and the great banquet?  What is Jesus saying to you in verses 34-35?

Journal Prompt:  How is the Lord leading you on a journey, allowing challenges and providing for your needs along the way? (Deuteronomy 8:3-5)

Answers

Deuteronomy 7:  The Israelites are to fear God alone.  They are not to fear the nations that seem greater than them, because the Lord is the one who will provide victory.

The victory will not be immediate – they will conquer the nations in Canaan little by little.  If they tried to do it too quickly, the wild animals would overtake them.

Deuteronomy 8: In verses 11-17, God warns them against becoming comfortable and being prideful – taking the credit for their success and not honoring the Lord.
It’s interesting that it is through a process of discipline and sometimes allowing us to ‘hunger’ that God draws us along on our journey to our promised land.  God provided manna when they hungered, and their clothing and shoes never wore out in 40 years nor did their feet swell.

Luke 1:  I find verse 1 interesting because Jesus was invited to dine on the Sabbath – the Pharisees are so bent on ‘catching’ Jesus in sin, yet it would seem to me that having a dinner on the Sabbath would entail work – exactly what they are criticizing.  Perhaps they had servants who were not Jewish who could work for them, but that seems to be hypocritical as well – having someone else serve you.

We are told that Jesus told the parables because ” he noticed how they chose the places of honor at the dinner.” (v 7).  I think Jesus lets us know that our faith can grow useless if we do not care for it – we can lose our ‘first love’ andt then we can lose our ‘saltiness’, in other words, we fail to do His will.