God Teaches His Law to a New Generation
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Moses closed with these impressive words: “I call heaven and
earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and
death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and
thy seed may live: that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that
thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him:
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for He is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in
the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob, to give them.”
Deuteronomy 30:19, 20
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The more deeply to impress these truths upon all minds, the great
leader embodied them in sacred verse. The people were to commit to
memory this poetic history and teach it to their children and children’s
children, that it might never be forgotten.
When their children should ask in time to come, “What mean the
testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord our
God hath commanded you?” then the parents were to repeat the history
of God’s gracious dealings with them—how the Lord had wrought for
their deliverance that they might obey His law: “The Lord commanded
us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good
always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at this day. And it shall
be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments
before the Lord our God, as He hath commanded us.”
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