Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Deuteronomy 10-11
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 84
Key Verse
Deuteronomy 11:6 — “And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:”
Devotional Thought
What does the Lord require of you? Moses asks Israel that question in the plains of Moab, and it lands on us this July morning with the same weight. The answer he gives is not a list of heroic feats but a way of life: fear God, walk in His ways, love Him, serve Him with all your heart and soul, and keep His commandments—which, Moses is careful to add, are “for thy good.” The God who owns “the heaven and the heaven of heavens” and the earth and all that is in it has stooped to delight in a people, and His requirements are the kind that a father gives a child he loves.
Notice how much memory Moses piles up behind the command. He rehearses the story: the two tables of stone hewed again after he broke the first, carried up the mountain and laid in the ark of shittim wood; the forty days and nights when God hearkened and would not destroy; Aaron’s death and burial at Mosera, with Eleazar ministering in his stead; the Levites set apart to bear the ark and bless in God’s name; the journey from Beeroth to Gudgodah to Jotbath, “a land of rivers of waters.” He reminds them of Egypt—the army, the horses, the chariots swallowed in the Red Sea—and of Dathan and Abiram, when the earth opened her mouth. “Your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD.”
Then he sets the choice before them: blessing on Mount Gerizim, curse on Mount Ebal. The land ahead is not Egypt, where they watered seed “with thy foot” like a garden of herbs; it is a land of hills and valleys that “drinketh water of the rain of heaven,” a land God Himself cares for, “from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.” Obedience and rain, disobedience and drought—the covenant is that concrete. So they are to bind these words on hand and forehead, teach them to children sitting in the house and walking by the way, write them on doorposts and gates. And Psalm 84 sings the same longing from the other side: the sparrow finds a house at God’s altars, the pilgrim passing through the valley of Baca makes it a well, and “a day in thy courts is better than a thousand.”
In mid-summer, when gardens depend on rain we cannot command, this is our lesson. The heart must be circumcised, not merely the calendar kept. The God who fed Israel in the wilderness and gives first and latter rain still asks for the whole heart—and still promises that no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.
Reflection
- Moses says God requires obedience “for thy good,” yet warns that a deceived heart can turn aside to other gods. What rival trust—comfort, approval, control—is quietly competing for the whole heart you are called to give God today?
- Israel was commanded to speak God’s words at home, along the way, lying down and rising up. Where in your ordinary Tuesday routine could His Word be spoken and remembered, so that your days and your children’s days are multiplied?
Prayer
O Lord of hosts, God of gods and Lord of lords, who regardeth not persons nor taketh reward: we come with hearts that are too often stiffnecked. Circumcise the foreskin of our hearts, we pray. Thou hast done great and terrible things before the eyes of Thy people, and Thou hast made us as the stars of heaven for multitude. Teach us to fear Thee, to walk in all Thy ways, to love Thee, and to serve Thee with all our heart and soul. Be our sun and shield; withhold no good thing from us as we walk uprightly. Let a day in Thy courts be better to us than a thousand, and bring us from strength to strength until we appear before Thee in Zion. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 84:1 — “How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!”