So Moses told the people, “You must be careful to obey all the commands of the Lord your God, following his instructions in every detail. Stay on the path that the Lord your God has commanded you to follow. Then you will live long and prosperous lives in the land you are about to enter and occupy.
Deuteronomy 5:32-33 (NLT)
Moses is one of the most well-known people in the Bible and perhaps all of history. Even people who don’t attend church, read the Bible, or know much about Christianity tend to know a little bit about Moses (Ten Commandments, part the Red Sea, etc.) You can find his story at the beginning of the Bible, in Exodus-Deuteronomy.
The tribes of Israel had spent 400+ years as slaves in Egypt and kept crying out to God to get them out of there. God heard their prayers and He sent Moses to deliver them from slavery and lead them to a new land where they could live and thrive as a nation. That trip took a LONG time and while the people were getting ready for a new home, God wanted to get them ready to be a new people. So, one of the jobs God gave Moses was to write down and teach them a set of laws to live by, since they were no longer slaves, but an independent nation. The Ten Commandments are at the core of the law God gave Moses, but there is a lot more to it.
Toward the end of his life, Moses reminded the people about the law that God had given and how important it was to remember it, and more importantly, to follow it. In Deuteronomy 5 he writes, “…be careful to obey all the commands of the Lord your God, following His instructions in every detail.” Then he tells them to “stay on the path.” Some versions of the Bible translate it this way, “do not turn to the right or the left…”
You see, the Israelites had a tendency to kind of stray off the path. They liked to live on the edge of what God had instructed them to do. They wanted to kind-of-sort-of-almost do what God said, but they tended to drift.
Honestly, I do the same thing. Instead of asking, “What does God want for me?” I ask, “What can I get away with and still be ok?” Maybe you do the same thing. There’s something about wanting our own way that’s hard to shake. But while we want our own way, God wants what’s best. Moses told the people that if they would stick to the path and not stray to the right or the left (no political commentary intended), they would experience long and prosperous lives. When we ask God for direction and then follow the path where He leads us, we will end up right where we want to be.
Where are you most likely to stray from God’s path for your life? Is it worth trading a long and prosperous life for?