119 Our Lord, you bless everyone who lives right and obeys your Law. 2 You bless all of those who follow your commands from deep in their hearts 3 and who never do wrong or turn from you. 4 You have ordered us always to obey your teachings; 5 I don’t ever want to stray from your laws. 6 Thinking about your commands will keep me from doing some foolish thing. 7 I will do right and praise you by learning to respect your perfect laws. 8 I will obey all of them! Don’t turn your back on me.
Lord,
I know your teachings,
what you ask of me,
I long to live by them,
for they are your ways to live.
Help me to focus on them,
on you,
to follow your directions,
to live your ways,
today,
tomorrow
and every day
Some choices in life are really easy decisions, others less so. Some choices have vital consequences, others not. There are however, decisions of all kinds to be made every day, from whether to have a cup of tea to whether to move house. Indecision is rarely an option.
Moses bring to the people the choice of their lives:
15 Today I am giving you a choice. You can choose life and success or death and disaster. 16-18 I am commanding you to be loyal to the Lord, to live the way he has told you, and to obey his laws and teachings. You are about to cross the Jordan River and take the land that he is giving you. If you obey him, you will live and become successful and powerful.
On the other hand, you might choose to disobey the Lord and reject him. So I’m warning you that if you bow down and worship other gods, you won’t have long to live.
19 Right now I call the sky and the earth to be witnesses that I am offering you this choice. Will you choose for the Lord to make you prosperous and give you a long life? Or will he put you under a curse and kill you? Choose life! 20 Be completely faithful to the Lord your God, love him, and do whatever he tells you. The Lord is the only one who can give life, and he will let you live a long time in the land that he promised to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Basically, a choice between God and his ways, or their own way. Success or failure…
Moses implores them to choose God’s ways, the way of life. They are about to cross The Jordan and take up the land that God has promised to them. The time has come to make a decision, it can no longer be dodged – so what will they do? How will they live there? To obey God and be loyal to all he has shown and told them? Or reject his ways and do what they like?
Whichever it is, Moses warns them, there will be consequences. Worshipping the foreign idols will take them away from God, being faithful to him will bring life. The time has come. A decision needs to be made one way or the other – which will it be?
It’s a choice that people continue to need to make for themselves, every day. Today it is a choice for us to make. Will I choose God and his ways, or not?
Lord,
today
and each day
I have to make a choice,
whether to choose you,
follow you
and your ways,
or not.
I choose you,
to live the way you ask of me,
to do all I do for you.
But you know
I cannot do that alone.
I need your strength,
your forgiveness,
your grace;
renew me Lord,
equip me
I pray,
for I long to live your way,
not mine
13 You are like salt for everyone on earth. But if salt no longer tastes like salt, how can it make food salty? All it is good for is to be thrown out and walked on.
14 You are like light for the whole world. A city built on top of a hill cannot be hidden, 15 and no one would light a lamp and put it under a clay pot. A lamp is placed on a lampstand, where it can give light to everyone in the house. 16 Make your light shine, so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven.
The Law of Moses
17 Don’t suppose that I came to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I did not come to do away with them, but to give them their full meaning. 18 Heaven and earth may disappear. But I promise you that not even a period or comma will ever disappear from the Law. Everything written in it must happen.
19 If you reject even the least important command in the Law and teach others to do the same, you will be the least important person in the kingdom of heaven. But if you obey and teach others its commands, you will have an important place in the kingdom. 20 You must obey God’s commands better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law obey them. If you don’t, I promise you that you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus has shown the disciples what true blessing is, he now tells them what they have to do. This is right at the beginning. He has called his disciples and now he is telling them what the calling is. They are to be salt and light in the world – to be his presence. He has come to show them God’s ways, and they are to live them in the world, so that everyone can see. God’s blessings are not just for them to hug tightly to themselves, but to share with everyone else, that they too might see God.
And for those who thought Jesus was bringing something new…
well he is, and he isn’t. God’s ways haven’t changed. He hasn’t come to tell them that God didn’t mean all those things about loving your neighbour and living justly; he has come to show them what those things actually look like. Successive generations had failed to grasp what God meant by his laws, so now they are going to be shown. That is what Jesus is here to do, and what his disciples are called to do too.
So the challenge, as ever, is to live God’s ways, day by day, in all we do.
Help me Lord,
as I learn about you
to live it,
share it,
that others may know too
Pam's Perambulation 