W. Robert Godfrey

because sometimes we set belief against obedience as if they were in conflict.

And obviously, if you're trying to earn your righteousness by obedience, then it is in conflict with faith.

But that's not what Moses is saying here.

He's saying, the Lord called you to believe and out of that belief to obey.

The obedience is a fruit of the believing.

And I think that's exactly what we find in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4.

Sometimes the Lord is speaking very passionately to the church about the importance of obeying, but when you read it all in context, you see that it really is that that obeying is to reflect their believing.

It's to flow out of their believing.

In that context, when we're not talking about justification, we don't set obedience over against believing, but the two are both fruits of the Spirit in the life of the Christian.

And that's what we see here and I think is so important.

Then Moses tells the story about how the law had to be given again, how God wrote the law a second time on the tablets of stone, and he brought it down to them.

And then, almost as a kind of parenthesis, in chapter 10 at verse 6, we're told about Aaron and about the death of Aaron.

The people of Israel journeyed from Beiroth, Ben-Yahakim, to Mosherah,

One of the great joys for children in attending church is when there are Old Testament readings and they watch the minister stumble over long Hebrew place names, so we can all enjoy that today.

And then we read, "...there Aaron died, and there he was buried."

and his son Eleazar ministered as priest in his place.

Here again, we have a parenthesis on leadership, don't we?

On transition.

Again, we could say, well, why pause here and talk about the death of Aaron?

And you could say, well, I guess you have to talk about it somewhere, stick it in.