Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What’s Distracting You From God? | Torah | Deuteronomy 7

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

What are your greatest obstacles? Is there anything holding you back from following Jesus? Do you feel like you reflect Jesus in your life? In today’s episode, Tanya describes Moses’s encouragement to Israel in Deuteronomy 7. Find out how you can battle distraction in your own life. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Deuteronomy 7.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. Football coaches must be great writers. After all, they're tasked to design and deliver a speech every week for 10 weeks. It's a speech that should inspire their team to believe they can win and play like it. It's not too different from what I get to do here every week, except I wonder what it's like to write a speech like that. when you know your odds of winning are grim.

Well, some do it better than others. Here's a clip from a pregame speech delivered by a Houston Oilers coach. It was sometime in the 72 or 73 season when they went one for 18. I seriously laugh every time I hear this. Take a listen. Here's our game plan. We're going out there this first half. We're going to explode like a bomb.

Then the second, we're just going to get higher. Third quarter. get higher. And the fourth quarter, we're just going to catch on fire. And that's our game plan. And let's just go out and do it that way. Okay, he said, here's what we're going to do. This half, we're going to explode like a bomb. Third quarter, we're going to get higher. Fourth quarter, we're going to catch on fire. Let's go. That's how we're going to do it. Do what? What does this even mean? I can't tell if he's trying to write a poem or if he just wanted to get this game over with. maybe he should have taken a cue from the Bible.

That's what the Indian Hills coach did before his high school team went out to play a much bigger and a much better opponent. This coach talked about David and how David was chosen, even though he was the smallest of the brothers. And while it looked like David was the least likely to be a strong king, what people couldn't see on the outside was his heart. And that was his intangible, whatever that meant. He was the youngest, the smallest, the weakest. He was the one selected. Now you may say, why am I telling you that tonight? Why do we need to hear that?

Here's why. I'm telling you what. He was the least likely candidate. There are a lot of people out here tonight who think you are the least likely candidate to be successful. David was chosen because he had an intangible. His intangible was his heart.

All right? Now, they're bigger. They got athletes, they got guys going to Division I schools. All right? We can see that. And so can everybody else. But nobody can see the intangible with us. All right.

There's a reason why I opened up to that passage. We got to make that happen tonight. Be the intangible tonight. Here we go. This guy, I think he was a genius. He got his team to focus on who they were instead of the other team's size and the chatter from the stands. Those things were distractions.

Who they were and what they brought to. the game was the best chance they had for success. What other people look like, what they're doing, and what they think of us are huge distractions that can chip away from our confidence in God and our dependence on Him. In Deuteronomy 7, Moses gives the Israelites a beautiful speech, and it's good for us, too, because it tells us the truth about who God is and who we are. We can come back to Moses' speech to re-center ourselves when we get our thoughts. out of whack about why God loves us and how we should live.

There are basically two parts to Moses' speech. The first half in verses 1 through 10, Moses explains their qualifications, or to quote the Indian Hills coach, they're intangible, whatever that meant. He tells them, the Lord is bringing you into the land and clearing it out for you because you are his chosen people and he keeps his covenant. I want you to hear exactly how he says it from verse 7. He says it is not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because

the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath he swore to your fathers. Then in the second half of Deuteronomy 7, Moses tells them what to do. Because Yahweh loves you and is faithful, you're going to obey his commandments in this land. That is how you should show your love for him. Since he says it best, here you go, verse 11. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandments and the statues and the rules that I command you today.

And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. Here's how I have this passage summarized in my journal. Tanya, know you are loved and chosen. Choose to obey. Now, when we look to God's word, it shapes the way we approach the world from the inside and outside. So we're going to talk about four ways this passage helps us face the questions that might distract us from living in a way that honors and reflects Jesus. First one, why are you here? Let's back up for just a minute. When we talk about the Israelites in the Torah, we're referring to God's chosen people, a people set apart for him and unto him.

These are the people who we entered into covenant relationship with based on his loyal love. When you choose to follow Jesus or respond to him, you are included in this people group that are in covenant with God. God's people will receive the promises of blessings God has to offer, and that's the big eternal hope. But it doesn't mean that they aren't involved in the normal. activities and the challenges of human life. You still have contact with the real world and its people, but as you live in that world, you reflect Jesus. In your current situation, you have opportunities to show the world what Jesus is like. Do you know those opportunities? Do you use them? And this was kind of the big reason for sending the Israelites into the pagan land to show them who God was. And it's a big

part of your life too. Second, what are your greatest obstacles? Now, we just identified that we live in a real world with real obstacles. Just like the football team was sizing up the opponent and thinking about how several of them were going to play in D1 colleges, the Israelites sized up the enemy in the promised land and thought they were too small to have any impact. You might have real obstacles like time and money and influence. You might have internal obstacles like lack of motivation and insecurity.

You might have external obstacles like conflicting viewpoints or challenging dynamics or even proximity. Check, check, check for the Israelites. And here's what Moses told the Israelites about their obstacles in verse 21. You shall not be in dread of them. For the Lord your God is in your midst. A great and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away these needs. nations before you. I can't really think of anything in my life that is actually in the way of me

obeying and following and reflecting Jesus that hasn't already been taken care of by Jesus. It just is. I might be afraid, but that's an obstacle, not a truth. Okay, third, how do you remember God's power in the face of opposition? Now, in the case of the Indian Hills football team, they needed to do what the coach told them. He wrote the game plan and they needed to have confidence in it and follow it. Not so different for the Israelites. Moses told them to obey God's commands and followed with something very important. Listen to what he said.

And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, this is from Moses, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant in the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. He will love you. bless you and multiply you. When we put God first and make a choice to do what he wants, our hearts are trained to want what he wants more and more. Our perspectives are open to see more of his power.

Our willingness is open to do more of his will. If you feel doubtful or stuck, the best thing to do is step out in love. Get on the field. Play the game. See what he's doing. Be part of it. Get your hands dirty. This is where we experience his love.

and find the truth of his power. Okay, last one. What does this look like in a culturally diverse world? We saved the best for last. The Israelites were going to a culturally diverse world. They would be the minority as they worship the one true God and no pagan gods. And Moses described what it would look like, and he told them to be separate, but not odd.

They weren't supposed to live among the pagan people in a way that would make them start living like them in terms of wanting the same things and chasing the same idols. God had a bigger plan for his people for eternity, and he didn't want them to get distracted over time by making small compromises here and there. We have the same game plan, and we need love and discernment to live it out. If we live separately without love, we are irrelevant and useless. We become a category instead of a light for Jesus.

So we love. We make sacrifices to love our friends and our neighbors on their yucky days because we know Jesus loves us on ours. We forgive people instead of writing them off. We commit to friendships and relationships for the long run and not for what we can get out of them. And we use discernment. When we're not sure if we should follow along or stand up, we let God's word be

our guide. We find a church that upholds his word and we plant there, not moving to find a church that says what we want it to say. So what's distracting you from knowing how much God loves you? What's distracting you from reflecting Jesus in some area of your life? These are questions we can ask ourselves and these are questions we can ask each other. When we answer them truthfully and apply God's truth to them, we remove their power to keep us distracted and anxious, and we see the opportunities in front of us. The more we do this, the more purposeful our lives become, and the more grateful and joyful we feel in living them. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday

that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.