March 17-21
[M] Deuteronomy 6-9; Luke 7
[T] Deut 10-14; Psalm 5; Luke 8
[W] Deut 15-18; Psalm 115; Luke 9
[T] Deut 19-22; Psalm 6; Luke 10
[F] Deut 23-26; Luke 11
Dwell Plan Day 56-60 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Deuteronomy 6:7-9 | In Orthodox Jewish homes, these commands are taken quite literally. You’ll still see mezuzahs on their doors to this day, little capsules on the doorjamb which have a copy of the law wrapped up inside. In this way they “write them on their doorposts.”
But you can do all that and still miss Jesus! Even the strictest and most diligent duty can be empty religious observance. These verses aren’t meant to direct us to write detailed inscriptions on our doorways—not at all. Doorways are the most common thing you use, and this makes all of these directions make sense. It’s about love for God not being abstract in your life, not being just an idea. It’s to fill your conversation and thoughts with as much regularity as walking through a door. It’s comprehensive and integrated truth. It’s truth that fills your talk the way it fills your life. We are supposed to drip truth and wear it like a favorite sweater. This is a vision of a life saturated with God and the good news. Praise Him!
Deuteronomy 6:10-12 | This is one of those examples of how God works with patterns. In this passage, He reminds Israel that the Promised Land is a gift they did not earn. They didn’t dig the wells, plant the vineyards, or build the cities—they simply received what God had prepared for them. And their response? They must not forget the One who provided it all.
This same pattern unfolds on an even greater scale in Christ. Your salvation is a gift, freely given, not something you achieved or deserved. You did not earn it; it was accomplished for you. And your response should be the same—never forget the greatness of your Savior.
Deuteronomy 8:19 | And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. | Keep this in mind as we move through the rest of the Old Testament. Ask: do the people leave YHWH to worship other gods?
Luke 7:9 | It must’ve felt pretty good to get a compliment from Jesus. And the compliment itself is amazing—the greatest faith Jesus finds is outside of His people! This would be a worthy pursuit for your whole life, to have Christ just say “wow” about your radical trust in Him. I want to amaze Him that way. Is that too much to hope for? Is it too much to pray? Of course not. You see, Jesus just has to say “Be filled with faith,” and it will be so. You see, I call for a rideshare, and it comes; and I send a package to my friends, and it goes there. How much more will anything that Jesus says or does happen if He orders it! What will you ask Him for today?
Luke 7:11-35 | The last words of this section are “wisdom is justified by all her children.” Luke puts the story of the widow’s son right alongside the story of John the Baptist. Why this arrangement? Raising widows’ sons is a big clue here—because that’s the same miracle that Elijah performed—and John the Baptist was also a reprise of Elijah’s ministry. What’s the point? Wisdom has come, and wisdom is bearing kids! Jesus is this wisdom if you have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. Jesus is the fulfillment of those Old Testament stories. They all anticipate Him and prepare us to understand Him. Are you one of wisdom’s children? That’s the implicit challenge.
Tuesday
Luke 8:25b | “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?” | Who is this guy? That’s the most important question in human history.
Deuteronomy 12:16 | We need circumcised hearts? It’s so easy to just focus on the physical. We did what God asked, isn’t that enough? No! It’s always been about spirit, because the flesh counts for nothing. Christ told us that, and you can see it in these verses here. God’s kingdom and love have always been about the heart, about internal change, about transformation from the inside out. Again we see the new covenant of Jesus poking its way into the Old Testament law, demanding and defining love as the point of the law.
Deuteronomy 12:31 | You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. | Remember this when we get to Joshua.
Wednesday
Deuteronomy 17:16-20 | This is the playbook for everything that went wrong with Solomon. We’ll get there in Kings/Chronicles.
Deuteronomy 18:15 | “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…” | This verse is referenced in the Gospel of John and explicitly quoted multiple times in Acts. The apostles understood it as a prophecy pointing to the coming Messiah, and they were convinced that Jesus was its ultimate fulfillment. He was the prophet greater than Moses, the one to whom all must listen. Just as Israel was called to heed God’s chosen messenger, we are called to listen to Jesus—God’s final and perfect revelation.
Deuteronomy 18:22 | This rule is such a gift to us! If you know any man or woman who has prophesied that something will happen, and it didn’t, then you don’t have to take that person seriously any more. What a relief! Use this rule consistently. This is just an old version of the New Testament rule: test the spirits. God never lies and is never wrong. He cannot be and still be God. So anyone speaking in His name and claiming that kind of authority has to submit to the same standard. Apply it and observe it; it cuts through a lot of spiritual mustard.
Luke 9:16 | In the miracle of feeding the 5,000 it’s the details that reveal the kingdom. The miracle of “multiplication” in the baguettes and sardines happens in the disciples hands, not in Jesus’. This becomes the paradigm for all ministry afterwards: we serve out of the overflow of the Spirit, where God does His miracle of provision and salvation in and through us. Scale is irrelevant to Jesus and always will be. We are the ones who think about the economy of scaling for crowds, who can’t imagine how it could happen, whose foresight is limited by practical concerns and feasibility. In some sense we repeat this miracle every week in the table, where God’s mercies are multiplied for us when we feed on Jesus, where a morsel of bread and a taste of wine express laying hold of grace, where crumbs and a sip promise us eternal life in Him.
Luke 9:23-27 | Here, Jesus calls His followers to take up their cross daily and follow Him. That might sound like a heavy burden, but here’s the good news—Jesus already carried the ultimate cross for us. He gave up His life so we could have true life, losing everything so we could gain eternity. Yes, following Him comes with challenges, but we’re never alone. The world tries to offer us success and comfort. The world says put down that cross and come get comfortable over here. But the gospel tells us that no comfort can compare to what Jesus has already won for us—salvation, joy, and a life that never ends. Whatever we give up for Him is nothing compared to what we gain in Him. Because of what He’s done, we can trust that following Him is always worth it.
Luke 10:20 | Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. | Near the end of his life, while he was sick, the great preacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was asked by a friend if he was doing okay now that he couldn’t preach anymore. His answer was to quote this verse. In essence, he was saying, “Doing ministry is good. Being a child of God is great.”
Psalm 6:2 | Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing | I should probably get this tattooed on my face.
Thursday
Deuteronomy 21:10-14 | This text addressing how Israelite men were to treat captive women in times of war was a significant step above other ancient law codes in terms of dignity and protection. In many ancient societies, captured women were treated as mere property, without rights, subject to immediate rape, abuse, or enslavement. However, this passage establishes boundaries that reflect God’s concern for human dignity. Instead of immediate exploitation, the Israelite man was required to give the woman time to mourn, treating her with respect rather than as an object. If he later chose not to marry her, he was not allowed to sell or enslave her but had to let her go free. Compared to the brutal norms of the time, this law introduced compassion, restraint, and basic rights for vulnerable women—pointing forward to the greater justice and mercy found in the Kingdom of God.
Deuteronomy 21:23 | This passage says that anyone hanged on a tree is cursed by God. Paul later ties this directly to Jesus in Galatians 3:13, explaining that Christ became a curse for us. Many first-century Jews struggled to believe Jesus was the Messiah because He died under a curse. But the apostles saw it differently—they proclaimed that His very suffering proved He was the Messiah. On the cross, Jesus took the full weight of God’s judgment—not for His own sin, but for ours. He bore the curse we deserved so that we could be set free from sin and death. In exchange, He gives us what He alone deserves: righteousness, forgiveness, and eternal life.
Psalm 6 | Bring God your tears. Notice how Christ takes these poems—because He teaches this: blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Christ didn’t make that up out of nowhere; it’s the attitude of faith of all those who suffer and know God is real. The scripture has a deep deep unity in its good news. Praise Him.
Friday
Deuteronomy 24:6 | If you take away a man’s livelihood, you take away his life—especially if you take from him what he needs to produce food for himself. This principle of justice breathes with compassion: you don’t let folks sell or leverage what they actually need to live. This is a place where all societies would benefit from some of these basic rights as expressed in God’s law, and we see the deep principles of grace and mercy that sit right inside the law itself. The New Testament finds its deep roots in the legal principles of God’s righteousness, which is always the same with our Heavenly Father.
Deuteronomy 25:4 | You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain. | This is a very rare thing in the ancient world: laws about compassion on animals. The idea is that while the ox is working for you, don’t starve him in order to save a few bucks; It’s not kind or compassionate, and we have stewardship over this creation, including the experience of farm animals! This is such a powerful idea that it becomes a principle for caring for folks in ministry—you don’t let folks go hungry while they’re working for the kingdom. It’s a principle of care and freedom built right into the law itself. No wonder the law is summed up in the word love.
Deuteronomy 26 | It’s a binary thing for God: you’re either blessed or cursed. That’s the choice. Notice two things. This is that Hittite contract detail again. Curses and blessings were always included in the covenant contract. But the parallel with Jesus is what strikes me. In Matthew 23, Christ lists the woes (curses) for the falsely religious folks of His day. In this way, Christ styles Himself to be the new Moses, the one greater than Moses. Christ is assuming the role of the covenant maker. The covenant we will break; the covenant He will keep for us in His body and blood. Same God, same relationships, same stakes, same faith and obedience, and the same salvation.
Luke 11:24-27 | We understand very little of how the spiritual world actually works, so it’s vital for us to pay special attention to anything Christ tells us about it. In this instance, Christ describes a heart that is orderly and swept. Tidy. But that tidiness is just an invitation to spiritual forces to return seven times stronger. What a precarious picture of the human soul and its vulnerability. We’re often encouraged in this generation (in self help books or from life coaches) to “empty our minds” and practice a meditation of mindfulness that lets our thoughts go. But don’t miss how important this is: you can tidy yourself up and get your mind in order, you can be disciplined and clean inside, and all of that is just cleaning out your soul so a demon can live there with a bunch of his buddies. None of that self help will help. Jesus needs to take up residence in our hearts. That’s the only solution. Invite Jesus over for company in your soul, and no evil spirit will come knocking to live there.