August 7: Reacquainted with the LORD

“You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Deuteronomy 6:7-8

Them and they refer to the LORD’s commands. They reflect the goodness, generosity, and love that comprise His pure and righteous character. To know them as frontlets between your eyes, means they reside in the frontal lobe of the brain for equipping unto right decision-making. It is the ‘launching pad’ to live out God’s word in sincere actions, as a sign on your hand—a positive example for others.

When Adam and Eve chose to comply with the serpent’s bidding—even though Adam didn’t actually believe the “revised” message—the consequences, just as God had lovingly warned, were dire. Eve, in accepting a false message, took action to violate the only constraint God had put into place. She allowed a false message to replace the true one in her mind. Adam still believed the words of God, but chose to transgress His command only because Eve had done so. Eve had unwittingly become a tool in the hand of the enemy to influence Adam’s actions (even though he knew right from wrong). If we are to be re-created in God’s image, our thoughts and actions will come into alignment with His word.

Up to that point, the education of Adam and Eve had been conducted in the most beautiful, idyllic setting known as the garden of Eden. Its purpose was to acquaint our first parents with the magnanimous and loving character of God. Banishment from God’s classroom was only one consequence of many that they experienced as a result of sin. Hanging over their heads now was a death sentence.

So now, in a fallen world—for all of nature was affected by the fall of humanity—the work of education takes on a new purpose: to reacquaint humanity with the aspects of God’s righteous character as well as to restore sinful humanity to His image as He originally intended. Because of the plan of salvation, all is not lost. The gift of choice and the equipping to choose rightly—originally provided by our Creator—are both still available.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2 Peter 1:2-4