Deuteronomy 11.1, 2

“You shall therefore love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm…”

The message is thus: Don’t lose sight of what God has promised, or of how He has thus far moved to fulfill those promises. And realize that further enjoyment of those promises is along the path God Himself has marked out in His Law. Believe, obey, and enjoy: here is a formula for blessedness.

This is “always” the way God brings His people to higher stages of blessedness. We must “always” walk in obedience to what God has revealed, beginning in His Law. There will never be a time when we will not be dependent upon God’s revealed Word in order to know how we must live before Him. Those, therefore, who scorn the Law of God, preferring to be “led by the Spirit” or to live “by the law of love”, are deceived. They would substitute for what God has revealed some subjective and sentimental standard of righteousness that seems right to them at the moment. Such has “always” been the way of death (Prov. 14.12).

God is appealing to Israel’s love for Him – because of His promises and redeeming grace – but, as we recall, Israel was not merely to love the Lord. They were also to fear Him. Sadly, love for God is never a completely adequate motivation for obedience, not even in the age of grace. God commands His people to run their race with energy and obedience, looking to Jesus, the quintessence of God’s promises and the agent of God’s redemption (Heb. 12.1, 2). But, in the same context, having reminded them of His grace and called them to faith and obedience, He also reminds them of His ability and determination to discipline those who fail to adhere to the way of righteousness unto which He has redeemed them (Heb. 12.3-11).

Such discipline is not pleasant. The people of Israel, assembled on the plains of Moab, would know that their hard-hearted fathers had all perished in the wilderness. Those hearing Moses would have seen God’s discipline, known its pain and sorrow, and have therefore been motivated to obey Him out of fear that such might befall them yet again.

God calls His people to obedience out of gratitude and love, but also out of fear.

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