W. Robert Godfrey

It almost sounds like a wedding ceremony, doesn't it?

Here's a pledge that God has given to his people and that he's asking of them.

This is the heart of the law.

This is the core of the law.

And it's so beautifully expressed here.

It's so powerfully stated about the relationship that God would have with his people.

And he goes on, Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.

Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.

And it's as if Moses is saying here, the Lord already had everything.

He didn't need you, but he loved you.

He placed his love upon you.

And how that should determine

your relationship with Him, your eagerness to know His law and to serve Him.

You know, in the history of the church, a number of great catechisms have been written, and it's my obligation as a Dutch Reformed minister to say the greatest of them all was the Heidelberg Catechism.

And the Heidelberg Catechism is divided into three parts.

The first short part is on guilt or on sin.

And the second part is on grace, how we're delivered from sin.

And then the third part of the Catechism is on gratitude, how we live a life of gratitude before the Lord for the grace and deliverance He has shown to us.

And that's sort of what we find here, that we are called to serve the Lord, to live for the Lord, to love the Lord out of gratitude for the great work that He has done in saving us.

So Moses is saying, the Lord placed his love on you, and he goes on there to say, circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn.