Reading
SAA Notes
To fear the Lord our God is to love Him! This fear is different from craven fear – it encompasses awe, respect, reverence. The phrase: our God is a burning fire, has the same meaning for fear – a healthy respect. Is your respect of God healthy or unhealthy?
SJA Notes
“Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.”
What a Heavenly Father we have, that even though He is Lord of all creation, He as set His heart in love for us!
And here, deep in the Old Testament, the Lord (and Moses) is clearly pointing to Jesus, who would bring about the new covenant.
The old (or current for Israel now) covenant is one of circumcision of the body.
But this was only ever a pointer to a better, deeper, more fuller covenant, one that Jesus brought in, that of the heart.
Oh that our hearts would be circumcised, no longer stubborn.
This is what Jesus does for us, what Jeremiah spoke of in Jer ch 31 v31 ->, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it [the new covenant] on their hearts.”
Praise our Lord God above for His grace and mercy to us. We were stubborn and hard of heart, but He called us, brought us into Himself in Jesus. He broke our hard hearts, circumcised the foreskin of our hearts and dissolved the stubborn refusal to acknowledge Him as Lord and Saviour.
This is what Moses wants for Israel, you can see it in his preaching.
It is good to be reminded of what Moses hammers home again and again to the Israelites. That this (above) is the God we serve, He has done great and terrifying things. So what else have you to do but to love Him, keep His charge, His statutes, His rules and His commandments always!
What else have we to do this day for our God, our King and Lord, who called us from darkness into light!