“It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God drives them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 9:5; see also Deuteronomy 9:27). How is the reality of the covenantal promises made manifest in this verse?
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Here, too, the covenant of grace appears: God worked for them — despite the constant mistakes. (This, surely, has to be how the gospel works today, as well.) And it was because of the promise made to the fathers that God’s grace was given to their future generations.
In Moses’ dealing with the people to whom the covenantal promises were given as a whole, he often referred back to the covenantal promises made to the patriarchs.
Read Exodus 2:24, Exodus 6:8, and Leviticus 26:42. What is being said here that helps show how the covenantal promises work?
The Exodus from Egypt, the great symbol of God’s saving grace, was also based on the covenant the Lord had made to their fathers. That is, even before the beneficiaries of the covenant were born, the promises were made in their behalf. Thus, through no merit of their own (to say the least), they received the promised deliverance, which God did for them through the miracles and events of the Exodus.
Of course, things didn’t end there. They went from Egypt to — where? Yes, Sinai, where the covenant with them was “officially” established (see Exodus 20). And central to that covenant was gospel and the law, the Ten Commandments, which they were called upon to obey, a manifestation of their saving relationship with the Lord, who had already redeemed them (the gospel). Hence, over and over in Deuteronomy, they were called to obey that law as their part of the covenant, which had been ratified at Sinai.
| What role should the law of God play in our lives today, we who have been saved by grace, and why is that law so crucial to our experience with God? |
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