Deuteronomy 4:1,41-5:2
– Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you…Then Moses set aside three cities east of the Jordan, to which
anyone who had killed a person could flee if they had unintentionally killed a neighbor without malice
aforethought. They could flee into one of these cities and save their life. The
cities were these: Bezer in the wilderness plateau, for the Reubenites; Ramoth in Gilead, for the Gadites; and
Golan in Bashan, for the Manassites. This is the law Moses set before
the Israelites. These are the stipulations, decrees and laws Moses gave them when
they came out of Egypt and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan, in the
land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon and was defeated by
Moses and the Israelites as they came out of Egypt. They took
possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two Amorite kings
east of the Jordan. This land extended from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge to
Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon), and
included all the Arabah east of the Jordan, as far as the Dead Sea, below the slopes of Pisgah.
Moses summoned all Israel and said: Hear, Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today.
Learn them and be sure to follow them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.
Exodus
19:5-6 – Now if you
obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations
you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you
are to speak to the Israelites.”
Hebrews
9:15 – For this reason Christ is the
mediator of a new covenant, that
those who are called may receive the promised eternal
inheritance—now that he has
died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first
covenant.
Genesis
17:9 – Then God said to Abraham, “As
for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you
for the generations to come.
Jeremiah
31:31,33-34 – “The
days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will
make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the
people of Judah…“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will
put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I
will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer
will they teach their neighbor, or say to one
another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because
they will all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and
will remember their sins no more.”
Application:
- · God’s call to His people to hear and obey is a frequent theme in Deuteronomy and elsewhere in the Old Testament.
- · Adherence to the covenant would bring God’s people the blessings of the Lord, while breaking the covenant would bring against them the punishments described as “curses”.
- · Participation in the divine blessings is conditioned on obedience added to faith.
- · On the basis of Christ’s atoning death, the promised eternal inheritance has become real for those who are called by God.
- · Having reviewed his covenanted commitment to Abraham, and having broadened it to include the promise of offspring, God called upon Abraham to make a covenanted commitment to Him—to “walk before me faithfully and be blameless”.
- · As the old covenant was put into effect with the shedding of the blood of animals, so the new was put into effect with the shedding of the blood of Christ.
- · The “new” covenant fulfills the “old” and achieves its purpose.
- · Now that the Lord has done His new work, there is no longer among His people those who are ignorant of Him and His will for human lives. True knowledge of the Lord is shared by all—young and old, the peasant and the powerful. The Lord is known in the experiential, not the academic, sense.
All Scripture verses taken from NIV
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