“Be Ye Therefore…” – Courageous to Keep and Do His Word

Introduction

Here at ServantsJournal.com we strive to possess a servant’s heart for service and for the things of God.  We also want to encourage fellow believers in their walk too.  I found something unique and fitting.  In God’s word numbers have symbolic meaning.  For instance the number five is the number of grace.  Eight is the number of new beginnings.  And seven stands for perfection or more properly completion.  Well, a while back there was this phrase that stood out in my mind, BE YE THEREFORE…

In searching for every instance of that phrase in the bible, I found that it only appears exactly seven times!  How appropriate!  When thinking of an encouraging thought, that which I would say to you appears seven times which is the number of completion.

The phrase ‘BE YE THEREFORE’ appears once in the old testament and six times in the new testament.  In each case, the phrase is used to encourage God’s people to be or do that which is for their good and for God’s glory.  There are, in total, seven short posts in this series.  I hope it will bless you the reader and help you to be a more complete (see why seven is important? 🙂 ) servant of God.

Courage to Be a Keeper and a Doer

Joshua 23:6 “Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left;”

It is not a popular truth, but God still desires His children to be obedient.  We ought to obey and therefore do the word because it shows we love the Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus plainly tells us that if we love Him, we will obey Him.  Our obedience to Him also identifies us as belonging to Him.  As Christ once told the Pharisees who claimed to be children of Abraham, if ye are children of Abraham, ye would do the works of Abraham.  The same is true of us as Christians.

Joshua in the passage above, is encouraging the people of Israel to both keep and do God’s word.  The idea is to keep, that is to preserve the Word in your heart, and to do or apply it in your walk and service to God.  Joshua recognizes that to do so would take courage.  In fact, he says they needed to be very courageous. The Lord knew that the children of Israel would face enemies within and without and that the world around them would have undue influence on them if they did not remember to rely on the truth of God’s word.

Final Thought – Dare to Stand in These Last Days…

Friend in these last days, it takes a brave man or woman to stand up for the truth and to do the will of the Lord.  We stand, as Paul once told the Philippian church, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.  But we are to “shine as lights in the world”.  How do we accomplish that in the coming year?  The same way Paul told the Philippian church, by “Holding forth the word of life”.  This world doesn’t need a new version of Christianity, rather it needs desperately to see once again amongst churches a new demonstration of what it truly means to be Christian.  Be ye therefore, my friends, courageous to keep and do all the is written in the precious Word of God.

THINK ON THESE THINGS…

A Fellow Servant