_________________________
The purpose of Deuteronomy is to remind God's people of His faithfulness and kindness so that they together embrace God's future for their lives.
A new generation grew up before Moses, but God's purpose remained the same. Through an elaborate rehearsal of events, good and bad, Moses reconnects that generation with God's unchanging purposes.
Each generation has its opportunity to understand and join God in His greater purposes.
Reviewing the course of our lives enables us to see where we are presently at and readies us for the challenges in God's plan ahead. The clearer we see God's involvement in our lives, the more we seek Him and His will.
The manner we respond to God's commands fully reflects the way we respond to God Himself. Through many warnings and exhortations, Moses calls God's people to devote themselves to the God who has revealed Himself to them in His Word.
God asks each generation the same question, "Do you love me more than all of these?"
God had presented the covenant to them before. He brings it to their mind again and reminds them of the failure of their fathers to seek God even though He has been so faithful.
God's laws restructure the way a people act, think and live out their lives so they can live in conformity with their Holy God. The many rules and judgments listed here all ultimately point to Christ the way to God. They were meant to lift His people up above all the other nations as they would live in God's holy presence.
Each generation is tested as to whether they will fully revolve their lives around Christ and His teachings. Great blessings follow the obedient, while curses those willing to disregard the words of Christ.
God clearly wants to get involved in our every day living. He wants to shape our decisions.
Moses calls the community of God's people to together come before God and enter into the covenant God has prepared for them. As they reaffirm their loyalty to God and God's people, they embrace God's future purposes together.
As we together understand and embrace the New Covenant in Christ, we are given extra grace to carry out God's great purposes.
God desires to bring a people close to Himself. Notice how the Lord persists in warning them so that they will gain all the special privileges that He wants them to have.
God
Before the Lord made a covenant with His people in the desert but now on the edge of crossing the Jordan, a new covenant is being remade. The history of the failure of the former generation highlights both God's mercy and patience but also the seriousness with which this covenant is being made.
Their inability to carry out the Law powerfully proves that the Law cannot not establish our relationship with God but only readies us for the New Covenant founded in Christ the Messiah through which our sins are fully cared for and our relationship with God is strongly established.
"For the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."( Romans 3:26).
_________