Over the course of my sabbatical I drove approximately 4,500 miles. That’s a lot of time in the car! So one of my sub-goals in the sabbatical was to listen to the Word of God while I was on the road. And listen I did!I was hoping to make it all the way through the Bible while I was gone but that didn’t happen. I made it through the first 13 books of the Bible (that’s through 2 Chronicles). There was a phrase that I heard over and over again as I listened to Scripture through my car stereo system. It is a phrase that is so common it is almost not noticeable as you read or listen to God’s Word.
The phrase is “the Lord your God.” I heard that phrase exactly 398 times in the version I was listening to while I was on the road (New King James if you’re wondering).
In fact, the phrase appears 431 times in the whole Bible (NIV)! It only occurs once in the book of Genesis. But in the first five books of Scripture (the Pentateuch) it occurs 308 times. Why is that phrase repeated so often so early in Scripture?
Why did Moses (the author of the Pentateuch) feel the need to use that phrase so much from Exodus through Deuteronomy?
The answer lies in the northeastern corner of Africa, in Egypt. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt for 430 years (Exodus 12:40-41). For centuries the Hebrews were a people group owned by another people group (the Egyptians).
And when God saves them and brings them out of Egypt (which is what we see at the beginning of Exodus) you begin to see the phrase, “the Lord your God” being used over and over again. The reason is because God wanted to embed the thought into the very soul of this people…I belong to you.
AND…if God belongs to them, then the converse is automatically true as well…that people group also belongs to God. He is YOUR God. And you are HIS people.
It is something that obviously they needed to hear over and over again. Because for so long the only gods they knew were the gods of the Egyptians. The only gods that they ever saw being revered belonged to another people group.
Oh sure they had heard the story of Abraham and God’s promise to Him but obviously, after so many centuries, that promise was not going to be fulfilled. But God was waiting for the right time and moment in history to save His people from slavery. And He did so. He did it in such a way that every single god of the Egyptians was proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to be worthless and nothing compared to the God of the Hebrews.
I believe it is a message we need drilled into our hearts as well. He is our God. And we are His people (1 Peter 2:9). We don’t need to keep being lured into idolatry by counterfeit deities…we worship the one true God of the universe! And He deserves our whole heart’s allegiance and affection!
