September 20 - Commanded to Keep the Word

September 20 - Commanded to Keep the Word of the Lord

Deuteronomy 17:19, "It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees..."

Ok, I promise that I didn't intend to spend the entire month of September lecturing on how important it is for us to spend time in the Bible. It certainly seems as if that is the point of all of this, though.

The thing is, as much as we might have heard from pastors and Bible teachers that it is important, the Bible tells us over and over again that we need to be firmly grounded in the Word of God so that the things of this world can't sway us when we are attacked!

Alright, I've been telling you that I am in the middle of a Comparative Religions course and that we are studying the Eastern religions right now. It has been a real comfort to me every evening to open my Bible and know that I am going to be teaching and writing from a book that simply presents ... TRUTH.

Buddhism's basic premise is that suffering is caused by mankind's desires. We need to eliminate suffering in our lives and the only way to do that is to eliminate our desires. So, they spend their entire lives eliminating the source of desires so that they can finally achieve nirvana ... or nothingness. The Buddha's teachings all revolve around how to get to that point. And remember, the Buddha was never a god, simply a man who found enlightenment.

Now how does that translate into a life of goodness and grace? Oh, it doesn't ... at all.

In Joshua's farewell message to the Israelites, he says, "Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book fo the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or the left." (Joshua 23:6)

We are given the Word of God so that we can live by a law that is greater than ourselves. God has given us these Words to keep us on the straight and narrow ... the path that leads to righteousness, that leads to holiness.

This book contains the Words of God, given to us so that we can understand our history, so that we can know how God will be with us in our future and so that we can be assured of a place in His eternal kingdom.

How do we respond? We learn these words so that we can be assured of their truth no matter where we are or what we are doing!