In Deuteronomy 4, we have read the wonderful admonitions that the Lord gave to His people through Moses regarding their great privileges as God’s chosen people. He had redeemed them out of Egypt “by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes” (Deuteronomy 4:34). In other words, not only did God do something great for you, He did it in ways that should help you remember, and never forget, what great things He had done for you.
Read Deuteronomy 4:32-39. What was the Lord telling them to remember, and why was it so important that they remember these things?
Image © Krieg Barrie from GoodSalt.com
Moses points the people back through all history, even to the creation itself, and asks them, rhetorically, if anything in all history had ever been done as was done for them. In fact, he tells them to ask; that is, to study for themselves and see if anything such as what they experienced had ever happened before. By asking them a few questions, Moses was trying to get them to realize for themselves what the Lord had done for them, and thus, ultimately, how grateful and thankful to Him they should be for His mighty acts in their lives.
Central to these acts was the deliverance from Egypt and then, perhaps in some ways even more astonishing, His speaking to them at Sinai, which allowed them to hear “His words out of the midst of the fire.”
Read Deuteronomy 4:40. What conclusion, then, did Moses want the people to draw from these words about what God had done for them?
The Lord didn’t do all those things for no purpose. He had redeemed His people, keeping His end of the covenant that He had established with them. They were freed from Egypt, about to enter the Promised Land. God did His part; they were now called on to do theirs, which was, simply, to obey.
| How does this model represent the plan of salvation as expressed in the New Testament? What did Jesus do for us, and how are we to respond to what He had done for us? (See Revelation 14:12) |
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