Deuteronomy 6:4-10 English Standard Version

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build,

We must not allow confusion to shake our faith.

God gives Israel instructions to write His commandments on the doorposts and gates to homes they do not yet have. They are living in tents in the wilderness at the time. Putting that aside for the moment, let us move forward to a time in which they have taken possession of that promise.

Moses writes the history of Israel in the first five books of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy has a lengthy list of commandments. Surely the doorposts are not large enough to contain all the instructions, nor would the gates to their homes.

Given that Moses wrote one copy of the Pentateuch and an estimated 600,000 families took up residence there, how would those families obey the command without a copy of their own?

The logical answer is a vast number of copies would have been made. 

Deuteronomy 17:18-19 English Standard Version

18 “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them,”

This is the only scripture I could find that indicates copies were made and approved by the priest. It indicates who would approve them.

2 Chronicles 34:13 were over the burden-bearers and directed all who did work in every kind of service, and some of the Levites were scribes and officials and gatekeepers.

The word for scribe here is סָפַר çâphar, saw-far’; a primitive root; properly, to score with a mark as a tally or record, i.e. (by implication) to inscribe, and also to enumerate; intensively, to recount. Perhaps this is not a title here as much as an action. Scribe became a title later.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

God has a plan for each and every one of us. I cannot imagine how much planning must have been done.

Last summer I planned a vacation to Maine. We drive. So I map out the trip and schedule hotel rooms and places I like to eat on the way. 3 days up, 3 days back, and 4 days in York, Maine. The mileage and gas is estimated. Food is a wildcard but I try to budget enough so we will not starve. Like that would happen. Plus count on emergencies, because we cannot control every aspect of a trip, so I budget accordingly.

Now that is just for a few days, not a lifetime. God is planning a future for us. I am not sure just how long that will be. I have to trust that God has planned out our lives better than we do.

Matthew 10 (in part)

Jesus Sends Out the Twelve Apostles

5 These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go ….. You received without paying; give without pay. 9 Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food. 11 And whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it and stay there until you depart.

Wow, thank God that He has never asked me to do that. I am a prepper. I plan out everything as best I can, or I don’t go. He can ask something of me that is out of my character. He has, but not on a large scale that needed major planning.

We may find ourselves challenged to get out of our comfort zone. Try to remind ourselves that God has the plan and that we are fitted to the task. Our discomfort is not a factor. At least it shouldn’t be. It is an opportunity to see God’s plan work out in real time with real people.

The last part in Jeremiah 29:11 is to give us hope. Nothing gives a believer hope more than seeing the hand of God at work. Every promise kept leads us ever closer towards that next promise we have not yet acquired.

Romans 16:26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—

Disclosure is a plan that has come into fruition.