January 12, 2025

Passage Read: Deuteronomy 12-15
Meditation Verses: 13:6-9

Thought

It did not matter who enticed an Israelite to worship a different God, they were all alike under sentence of death. It did not matter how close they were to you or how much you loved them, you were to love the Lord even more, and be so offended by the invitation to worship another God, so jealous for God that you didn't hide the matter, but we're the first person to cast a stone to kill them. Family is not more precious than the Lord, but the Lord more precious than even family.

Application

This is what Jesus means when He says to love the Lord more than anything else, to forsake all and follow Him. While we do not have the corresponding legal system in place that allows us to put to death anyone who entices us to worship any other God but the Lord, Jesus affirms the principle that God is greater even than family. He came to bring a sword that divides. Anyone who leaves home and family and lands and houses for the Gospel and Christ will be richly rewarded. Who are our true family? Those who do the will of our Father in heaven--not those who hear His words or even repeat them, but those who do them. God, loyalty to Him, seeking and serving Him, that matters far more than flesh-and-blood relations and ties.