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God's people sometimes so magnify the grace of God that they think obedience is completely unimportant. Or they so magnify obedience that they lose sight of the reality of God's grace. And believing in justification by faith alone does not mean you stop believing in sanctification.
The book of Deuteronomy features the final speeches of Moses to the Israelites before Joshua would lead them into the land of Canaan. And over the next three days, W. Robert Godfrey will consider the warnings given in the final chapters of Deuteronomy and what that teaches us about God, His covenant, and His faithfulness. You're listening to the Monday edition of Renewing Your Mind.
I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. We shouldn't neglect the history of the Israelites in the Old Testament. As Christians, this is our history too. And in his 21-message series, Discovering Deuteronomy, Dr. Godfrey walks us through this book that covers the events that took place between the book of Numbers and Joshua.
You can get better acquainted with Deuteronomy when you request the series on DVD along with streaming access when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Here's W. Robert Godfrey, the chairman of Ligonier Ministries, to begin a series on the warnings found in Deuteronomy.
Well, we're into a section of Deuteronomy that I've labeled warnings and warnings It begins perhaps with a surprise. I think we could almost say that's the character of Deuteronomy. It's surprising us. This is why it's kind of hard to figure out exactly what's going on sometimes.
So chapter 26 doesn't begin, and now the warnings, but it begins with, "...when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first fruit of the ground." So chapter 26 begins to talk about firstfruits.
This at least tells us that we're entering into a somewhat different subject because firstfruits were part of the laws for the love of God. discussed in the earlier part of the book. The first fruits or the feast of weeks was one of the three annual feasts where Israel had to go up to Jerusalem to worship God. So we're moving out of laws to love the neighbor into a new
part that we'll see is about warnings, and the warning begins with, you need to keep the laws about loving God, which includes the law about the firstfruits, which is a requirement that you take the firstfruits up to Jerusalem annually to offer them to the Lord. And this is a crucial part of who you are to be so that you'll remember
We make jokes in our time about identity in a variety of ways, but God is very clear that the Israelites' identity was to be constantly reasserted in terms of their history. We see that here. When you go up to Jerusalem, verse 5, to offer the firstfruits, And there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor.
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