And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. [Deuteronomy 6:5-7 (NLT)]
Knowing it was important for both the leaders and the people to be reminded of their rights and duties, Moses instructed the people that every seven years the Book of the Law was to be publicly read to the entire nation (including children and foreigners). This reading was to be done following the Feast of Shelters during the Sabbath year.
Whether the Book of the Law was the entire Pentateuch or just Deuteronomy, we don’t know. We do know, however, that public reading of it is only mentioned four times in the Old Testament! The first public reading was done by Joshua following the Israelite defeat of Jericho and Ai. More than 500 years later, King Jehoshaphat sent out two priests with copies of the law to teach the people. The Book of the Law was misplaced sometime after that. When it was found during temple repairs more than 230 years later, King Josiah read it to the people of Judah. 200 years later, after Jerusalem’s wall had been rebuilt. Nehemiah gathered the people to hear Ezra read God’s law. It was then, nearly 1000 years after first commanded, that the Book of the Law finally was read during the Feast of Shelters.
The Israelites didn’t start out ignorant of God; Moses and Joshua gave them a good start. Although the people were instructed to commit themselves to the law and teach their children, generation after generation strayed further and further from God and His word. The Israelites broke God’s law, sometimes deliberately and sometimes in ignorance. Nevertheless, breaking God’s law came at a high cost; without a firm foundation in God’s word, both the northern and southern kingdoms were defeated and collapsed.
For the most part, the Israelites were Scripture illiterates. Today, however, we have no excuse for not knowing God’s word. The Barna Group’s research shows that 87% of Americans have at least one Bible in their homes (the average number being three). I was encouraged to learn that half of Americans are considered “Bible users” until I realized that simply meant they read, listened to or prayed with the Bible three to four times a year! That sounds more like Bible referrers than users to me. Worse, one third of Americans never even open a Bible!
As Christians, have we committed ourselves wholeheartedly to God’s word or are we becoming Scripture illiterates? The Israelites lost their way without His word; we don’t want to make the same mistake.
Looking back, I realize we’d heard a chirp once or twice earlier that day but had ignored it. Busy running errands, we’d given the odd sound no thought. At 12:22 AM, however, the source became obvious and could no longer be ignored. The bedroom smoke alarm was chirping loudly every minute or so. I looked at my husband with envy—without his hearing aids, he was oblivious to the annoying noise above our heads. Since there was no way I was going to return to slumber, I woke him and we replaced the battery. Two nights later, when the same thing happened with the brand new battery, we simply took it out and went back to bed. I’m embarrassed to admit we had no battery in that alarm for the next several months. Since 60% of home fire deaths occur in properties without a working smoke alarm, we were foolish to ignore the problem.
In his classic satire The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis gives the reader a series of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, advising the novice demon on ways to secure the damnation of his “patient,” an ordinary young man. Warning that the demons are defeated whenever man directs his gaze toward God, Screwtape encourages his nephew to keep the patient (a new Christian) from praying. If prayer can’t be prevented, he advises getting the fellow into a “devotional mood… since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practiced by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy’s [God’s] service.” Screwtape reassures Wormwood that “lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time.” It won’t be difficult to redirect the patient’s attention, he tells his nephew, since humans aren’t really as desirous of “the real nakedness of the soul in prayer” as they suppose.
I glanced up at the ceiling; there, yet again, was a spider web hanging across the hallway. I brushed it away along with all the others that had appeared in our absence. Nevertheless, I know they will return; they always do. I can get rid of the spiders’ webs but, without getting rid of all the spiders, they will return.
Devotions of the Heart 