Text:

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? (Deuteronomy 10:12-13)

Moses was summarizing the main points of God’s covenantal nature for Israel’s hearing. As the shepherd of the flock, a picture of Christ and his church, Moses shouldered an immense responsibility. He was charged with leading a people but to lead them in God’s ways. Why? For their good.

That’s the phrasing that Scripture uses in Deuteronomy 10:13. God does what he does for our good, for the good of his people, because God is good, and what God does is good.

But did you notice how the first section of the text above begins? Did you catch the first requirement God has for his people? We are to fear the Lord. Why? Because that is the beginning of wisdom. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Pr 9:10a).

It’s when we don’t revere the Lord that we fall into sin. Sin festers, infects, and destroys when we fear men as ultimate rather than fearing God.

But God is not a cosmic killjoy. That is the opposite of what Scripture reveals. For God’s people, Scripture teaches that in God’s presence is fullness of joy (Ps 16:11). That’s the way the human story began. We had fellowship with God. We walked with God. Eden was not just a real geographical location in the ancient Near East but it was a picture of what man was created for–fellowship with God and a creation fit for him that he was to steward. God had provided everything and pronounced it good. Moreover, God had created for man a helper suitable/fit for him, namely, the woman. And there you have the paradigm: a husband and wife, commanded to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth as stewards responsible to God. And it was done for their good.

Encouragement: But the nature of sin is to thumb one’s nose at the wisdom of God’s ways and to believe the liar and father of lies. Yet God, being rich in mercy, has determined to save a people for himself: “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—” (Eph 2:5). God is the great rescuer of us spiritual rebels. And he does it all for our good and his glory. Those two things–our good and his glory–are inextricable.