Learned Reverence (Part 2)

“When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel” (Deuteronomy 17)

In my previous article on “Learned Reverence” we learned that one learns reverence by continual sacrifice. In this text we find that we also learn reverence by continual reading of the Lord’s Word (the Bible).

In other words we can’t just read the Bible one time and smugly think to ourselves… I’ve got the basics of what God wants me to do I don’t really need to waste any more time with reading.

Note in the above text that there are some reasons why we continually read. The first of which is so that we can follow carefully and exactly in what is written and in that carefulness turn not to the “left or right” but follow exactly in the footsteps of Jesus (so to speak). That type of behavior by the way demonstrates a reverence for God.

Believe me humans tend to be forgetful and might hang their faith on a favorite verse or two and neglect the others and develop a spiritual arrogance of spiritual superiority.

For example, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told (in the air of superiority) that you don’t have to go to church to be saved or that all my dead relatives are in Heaven or that I’ve been saved by grace and I don’t need anything else, etc.

In my personal experience the ones who say such things don’t know their Bibles very well and would do well to heed the instructions given in Deuteronomy 17 and that is exactly why I read my Bible every single day so that I might also not forget and continue to learn to… revere God.