The covenant itself is not contingent on the obedience and
faithfulness of the people, it can't be, they will fail. What is contingent is the receipt and enjoyment
of the blessings and promises of the covenant.
Moses says, "if you will
be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the Lord
your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these
nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than
you." They are already in an
everlasting covenant of grace with the living God, if they are to truly be His people
and enjoy all He has prepared for them, they must be obedient to His Word but
they must make His Word their chief delight and their chief occupation. Read back through the first three verses
thinking about what life would look like to be obedient to them and see that
they are to be completely obsessed with the Word of the Lord. Do you think those same promises are for the
church? Jesus said that the gates of
hell would not prevail against it. Are we
obsessed with the Word, both written and in Jesus?
This is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. It shows Jesus is always about the Father's
business, every moment of every day. Something
as simple as an encounter with a sinful Samaritan woman at a well can become an
opportunity to share the Good News, an offer of living water for a weary
soul. She believed in something already,
that she and her people had it right, that the Jews were apostate from true
Yahwism. She might be sinful but that
didn't mean she wasn't a believer. Jesus
speaks into the deepest desire of her heart, living water that she might no
longer have need to come to this place. The
most amazing thing in the story to me is that He revealed Himself to her, a
sinful woman who had it all wrong about God.
Remember that the last thing John told us about Jesus' attitude towards
people in Jerusalem, the place that had it right, was that He wouldn't entrust
Himself to them because He knew what was in their hearts.
Jesus, like the high priests of Judaism, can deal gently
with sinners but not because He ever sinned.
He can deal gently with us because He knows how difficult obedience can
be, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. The writer tells us that Jesus learned
obedience through suffering. Are we willing
to suffer to learn obedience? The Lord always
tells His people that He desires not only mercy more than sacrifice but
obedience. Knowing the Word of God in
our heads isn't as important as living by it, obeying it, no matter what the
cost. Eternity is the reward but also,
His Word is a word of life to us. We are
to walk in love as Christ loved us, an offering and a sacrifice to God. We are His people, we are redeemed!
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