Sword & Trowel 2016: Issue 2
VERSES 10-11: ‘Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp…’ – that is, including your pagan servants. This will be a different covenant,
says Moses, embracing people as individuals, whether children of Is- rael or not. It will be for individuals from the highest to the lowest, and you must individually respond. This is not a national but a personal cov- enant.
VERSES 12-13: ‘That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day: that he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers.’ The gracious covenant and promise
delivered to Abraham will be for a very personal relationship with God.
VERSES 14-15: ‘Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day.’ God, says Moses, will deal gra- ciously, not only with Israelites who come to him, and choose him (Joshua 24.15 and John 15.16), but with others also, and future generations, dealing with them as individuals (note the repeated ‘him’).
VERSE 18: ‘Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or fami-
ly, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord our God.’
Now the pearls of sheer grace begin to fall thickly with words such as – ‘whose heart turneth away’. Moses, as an ambassador of grace, moves to the point. This will be a covenant that deals with the heart; not – Do this and live – but ‘whose heart tur- neth away’. These are solemn words of warning that true religion is not a matter of achievement or ceremony but of heart.
VERSE 19: ‘And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst.’
This covenant, says Moses, de- mands sincere repentance and embracing of forgiveness. It is about finding true acceptance with God, and not presumptuous confidence.
VERSE 20: ‘The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man.’ That man, we note, not plural men, for this is about the hearts of indi- viduals. ‘And all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.’ There is, Moses warns, a com- ing judgement. And the warnings continue to the end of the chapter, for without transforming grace all are lost. But then comes chapter 30 where the language of grace flows in an irresistible tide.
The ‘Evangelical Covenant’ of Moses page 21
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