Dueteronomy 10

And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?

(Deu 10:12-13)

He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

(Mic 6:8)

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

(Mat 22:37-40)

In these verses we are given the WHAT in terms of what the Lord requires of His people. All throughout HIStory, these things have not changed. What God desires is to see people reverence and respect Him, follow after Him, love and serve Him. According to Micah these things are accomplished by doing the right thing, loving to show mercy, and continuing to walk humbly before the Lord. Jesus summed it all up by saying – “Love the Lord with all you are, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

We could sum it all up by saying that what the Lord requires is a life that is all about loving Him, and serving others. A life that is not SELFISH, but selfless and worshipful. It is easy to understand this concept, in some ways it is even easy to describe the details of how these things might “look” in our culture today. The difficulty doesn’t come with the WHAT, but is found in the HOW.

This is the big question… the law showed the Israelites WHAT God required, but it didn’t offer any resources as to HOW it was to be accomplished. The Israelites continued to fail because the LAW CANNOT ENABLE. All it can do is show a man what He is lacking. The book of Galatians tells us that the Law is a SCHOOLMASTER; a teacher that makes us see our need, and hopefully causes us to turn to the only One who can give us the resources to meet that need. Man cannot keep the law in his own strength. No matter how great the man, he still has a sin nature, and still breaks the law on one level or another on a regular basis.

In the text here God asks the Israelites to be circumcised in heart, and to stop resisting the work God wanted to do in them. You see, they had begun as a nation by FAITH. It was only by continuing to walk by FAITH, trusting in the sacrifices God had ordained, receiving grace and mercy from Him, that they could have a successful walk.

Today, we have JESUS. We don’t just know the WHAT, we truly have the HOW. God has given us all the resources that we need to live up to His standards. He has come to fulfill in and through us the righteous requirements of the law. As we live by grace and walk according to the Spirit; we can achieve what would be impossible in the flesh. “With men this is impossible; but with God, all things are possible.”