If you were God, you would face the challenge of parenting humans: when you bless them, they get cocky, rude, and selfish. When you punish them, they repent—but it hurts to watch them suffer. This is the Deuteronomic principle: if you love children, you want to lavish them with gifts—but when you do they become nasty.
Think of celebrities, athletes, movie stars. How do beautiful and famous millionaires stay humble? Many don’t. Imagine how that is magnified when God makes a man a king. Suddenly, he is the boss of everyone, has everything he desires, and is the most celebrated celebrity on earth. Arrogance and evil will stick to him closer than a shadow, ready to destroy him. So what does God do?
He writes a special law for the king.
“When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll. It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be exalted above his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandments.” Deuteronomy 17:18-20.
God’s plan to keep kings humble: (1) write, BY HAND, his own copy of the Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and (2) study it EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE. By copying the scriptures by hand, the king will “make it his own.” That keeps him from becoming arrogant and thinking it does not apply to him, that he is better than ordinary folks. And studying it every day reminds him—you are NOT above the law. You must obey God. Every day.
Are you spending as much time in the Word as the kings of Israel? If not, why not? It is the Bread of Life—you must feed yourself from it every day.
ΑΩ
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