The Lord Is Your Life

Deuteronomy 30:17-20 – But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Isaiah 1:2 – Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth! For the Lord has spoken: “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.

Deuteronomy 6:5 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Deuteronomy 4:1 – Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.

Deuteronomy 8:3 – He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Psalm 27:1 – The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?

Leviticus 18:5 – Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord.

John 10:10 – The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Application:

• ·         The prophet calls on the heavens and the earth to testify to the truth of God’s accusation against Israel and the rightness of His judgment—since they were witnesses of His covenant.
• ·         When the Israelites chose the Lord, they chose life. “All the words of this law” are said to be their “life”. The law, the Lord and life are bound together. “Life” in this context refers to all that makes life rich, full and productive—as God created it to be.
• ·         Primarily in view here is the love shown by a subject to a king. To love King Yahweh is to be His loyal and obedient servant. Love for God and neighbor is built on the love that the Lord has for His people and on His identification with them. Such love is to be total, involving one’s whole being.
• ·         God’s call to His people to hear and obey is a frequent theme in Deuteronomy and elsewhere in the Old Testament.
• ·         Bread sustains but does not guarantee life, which is God’s gift to those who trust in and live by His word: His commands and promises.
• ·         Light often symbolizes well-being or life and salvation.
• ·         The law was the way of life for the redeemed, not a way of salvation for the lost.
• ·         A thief’s interest is in himself. Christ’s interest is in His sheep, whom He enables to have life to the full.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV