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…”

How thorough must their obedience be? Israel is to “keep” God’s charge, defined as His statutes, rules, and commandments. Exhaustive obedience to all the Law of God: this is the key to continued enjoyment of the promises. Let us keep in mind that obedience is not unto redemption. Redemption has already been accomplished and was all of grace. Israel – then and now – was not saved by works, but unto them (cf. Eph. 2.8-10). Obedience is to be out of gratitude for redemption, unto further realization – higher stages of realization – of the precious and very great promises of God, and is therefore by faith expressed as obedience.

The message to Israel on the plains of Moab was 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).

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