Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we drop back in on Moses parting words to the Israelites before his death,

and he starts with a command we've heard often, but we've never really drilled down on it.

God has commanded us to love him. The word love here indicates emotion. It's action adjacent,

but it's emotion-specific. How do you command a feeling? Jen Wilkin says, the heart cannot love

what the mind does not know. And I'm guessing that by fixing

your eyes on his word daily, by looking for him in scripture instead of for yourself, that you love him

more now than you did 75 days ago. The more we take our eyes off ourselves and get to know this

infinitely lovable God, the more we will love

him. Moses speaks specifically to the adults among the crowd who were alive even when the Exodus

happened, and he reminds them again to remember who God is and what he has done for them. In 1116,

he tells them to pay attention to their hearts.

There are things around them that will entice them to worship them,

and they have to be vigilant to not be let astray by these new shiny things.

If they stay faithful to God, no nation will overtake them.

God has already proven that he can defeat bigger armies.

There's an interesting image at the end of Chapter 11. He tells them to choose between blessing and cursing, represented by two different

mountains, Mount Garazim, the Mount of Blessing, and Mount Ebel, the Mount of Cursing. The Israelites

will perform the ceremony he commands for this later in Deuteronomy, so we'll just put a pin in it

for now,

but know that we're coming back to it. Moses continues to warn against idolatry, and if it's

starting to feel like he's repeating himself, it's because he is. First of all, he's old,

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