Today’s reading: Deuteronomy 11; Revelation 12
Thoughts on Deuteronomy 11
Have you noticed how wildly repetitive Deuteronomy has been so far?
I’m realizing this morning that this is one of the pitfalls of a reading plan like this one that reads just one or two chapters a day. Each day as you sit down to read (or listen) to the next chapter, you’re kind of starting fresh. I expect you remember the broad strokes of the context you are carrying in as you start each day’s chapter, but there are things you’re a lot more likely to miss reading this way. So when the author keeps repeating an idea or uses the same kind of terminology in a couple places to link two ideas together, you’re just a lot less likely to notice those things.
And maybe you have noticed it more than I have, but the incredibly repetitive nature of Deuteronomy has been one of those things for me. I don’t remember noticing in the past just how much each chapter sounds like the last in terms of Moses harping over and over and over again on the same warnings to be faithful to God and keep His commands so that they can stay and prosper in the land. In fact, the reason I have noticed it as much as I have this time through is because I am writing these posts. Every morning lately I’ve been thinking, “Really? Again? I already wrote about this multiple times and we’re only a handful of chapters in! What am I supposed to write about that’s different??”
But that’s really the point, isn’t it? If I wrote about this every time Moses said it in Deuteronomy, you would either stop reading my posts or you would say, “Joe, we get it, find something else to write about!” So how do you think the Israelites felt as they listened to Moses give this speech? When Moses is 15 minutes in and is reminding them for the 73rd time to remember God and not forsake Him or they are going to be removed from the land, they had to be thinking, “Yes, Moses, we get it! Now seriously, you’re about to go up the mountain and die. Get on to the important stuff we need to know before you go!” But this is the important stuff.
Moses knows how fickle their hearts are, and he knows how much trouble they have had staying any kind of faithful to God even while they have his leadership pushing, prodding, and pulling them back in line. So now that they will be without his leadership, what is more important than that they remember this one thing, to choose faithfulness to God and walk in His ways, so that they don’t get destroyed from the land like the peoples there before them?
It’s always important to pay attention to the ideas and themes that the biblical authors are repeating, and especially if/when you find yourself getting annoyed and thinking, “We get it, move on already,” that would be a good time to stop and ask why it is getting repeated to the point of annoyance, and what is so incredibly important that God has for His people in it.
Thoughts on Revelation 12
For Revelation 12 I am going to point you to an episode of The Naked Bible Podcast: https://nakedbiblepodcast.com/podcast/naked-bible-138-what-day-was-jesus-born/
This episode was a Christmas episode from 2016 and is looking at what day Jesus was actually born, and he uses Revelation 12 as the basis for getting to a date. It’s just fascinating and there is no way I could do the content any kind of justice here, especially compared to how Dr. Heiser presents the material on his podcast. So I’m just going to point you over there, and if you give it a listen, come back and let me know what you think!
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