W. Robert Godfrey

Well, those sermons run to almost a thousand pages, I think, and they're in Old English.

They're not at all easy to read, and yet she was very conversant with them and really praised Moses for the gentleness, the compassion in many ways of his law.

She offered the example that in 18th century Britain there were many, many crimes that were punishable by death.

And many of those crimes were crimes of theft.

And she said, by comparison, in Moses' law, no one is put to death for stealing something.

They're punished.

They have to make restitution.

But it's not a capital crime to steal something.

And so she's talking about the humanity

and the love that's embedded in the law of Moses and how much it's oriented towards building community.

And that essay is really fascinating and I think actually captures very effectively something that is going on here in these texts and reminds us that we want a

community of love, love of God, love of the neighbor in the church that shines in a dark world with a wonderful testimony to us being a separate, a different people.

And Moses goes on then to again remind this people of their own history and what they ought to learn from that history.

Verse 22 of chapter 10, "'Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy persons.'"

And now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

This is a remarkable church growth passage from 70 to millions.

Who has done this?

The Lord has done it.

This is the blessing of the Lord.

Israel could have starved in Egypt.