Deuteronomy 4 – 6

Verse 4:2 makes me think of two things:

Don’t add anything to what I command you, and don’t take away anything from it; just follow the commands of the Eternal your God that I’m giving you now.

First how John said the same basic thing in Revelations and people use that against each translation of the Bible. We need to understand that in all the translational studies I have done over time I have only found one or two lines in translations that have raised my eyebrows. This is written twice and technically there are vast differences in each translation of the Bible with many books kept or removed. Think of the Gnostic Gospels and how they have been deleted completely from most translation. Anyway my point is these words here and later in John are directed at their specific writings.

Second is how the people are to “follow” the commands and not that they are all sins. That is one of the key points of Peter’s vision; it was not that eating was a sin but rather not blessing the food. Jesus came to end the legalism where the system was in place to judge and not help.

Verse 4:16 makes me question how we worship God:

so don’t ever become so corrupt that you carve an idol representing Him for yourselves in any shape, whether in the form of a man or a woman, 

Have we made the “cross” and idol? I read this and the Ten Commandments (which are repeated in Chapter 5) and wonder if we are worshiping idols, specifically the cross, that represent Jesus. These words are specific and we are not to carve anything in the form of an idol. When looking at chapter 5 think about the actual 10 statements, most Christians consider verse 7 to be one and verses 8 – 10 to be another. Jewish people actually combine 7-10 and have the first one “I led you out of Egypt where you were slaves”. I believe this since God wants us to be free from slavery and that is where the USA was unique. Unfortunately we have become slaves to the debt system made in this nation.

Verse 6:7 is something myself and most fathers miss with our children:

 Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you’re sitting together in your home and when you’re walking together down the road. Make them the last thing you talk about before you go to bed and the first thing you talk about the next morning. 

As Christians we tend to let the “Sunday School” system teach our children and never emphasize it in our homes. Unfortunately the nation’s parents are doing the same with the school system that has attempted to take over raising our children. Think about the “women’s movement” and how the whole idea initially was to ensure they did not have to rely on the “man of the house” when they left them for another woman. The result is our children are raised by a “select” group of people who are only invested in getting your child through their class.

The point is we have shifted the hard part of parenting to the “system” while just doing the easy stuff. The problem we had as parents is we though the example was what was needed and not the teaching that went along. So I believe things got missed, a “work ethic” became a curse to them since we did not have great family vacations all the time. The “system” corrupted our example and we did not explain the why’s to our kids. Don’t miss talking about God with your children on a daily basis.