The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is member supported and operates only by your faithful support. Thank you.
by Sarah Ivill
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is member supported and operates only by your faithful support. Thank you.
Place for Truth is a voice of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Place for Truth and the mission of the Alliance.
Recently I was speaking at a women’s conference where girls as young as ten years old attended. One of these young girls approached me after the conference was over and asked me a good question, What does it mean to walk with the Lord? I answered as succinctly as I could. We read our Bible. We pray. We go to church on Sunday. We love God and enjoy our relationship with Him. We trust God and we obey Him.
But I could have also taken her to Deuteronomy 10:12-22 to answer her question. The beginning of the passage asks a very important question, “And now Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you” (Deut. 10:12)? In other words, How should God’s people live in light of His electing love and gracious redemption? Or, What does the Lord, who has redeemed them, require of them? The passage goes on to answer the question. Israel is “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” (vv. 12-13).
Such requirements are for the good of God’s people. The Creator of heaven and earth could have chosen any people upon whom to set His heart in love, but He chose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their offspring to love. Israel was to respond to such love by circumcising the foreskin of their heart. Remember, circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant (see Gen. 17:1-14). The outward act of circumcision was always meant to symbolize an inward spiritual reality (see also Jer. 4:4; Rom. 2:25-29). God’s people were to turn away from stubbornness of heart toward the great, mighty and awesome God. Far from the gods of Egypt and Canaan, the one, living and true God, executes justice for the orphan and widow, loves and provides for the sojourner, and expects His chosen, redeemed people to do the same (see also Deut. 24:17-22). After all, Israel knew what life was like as a sojourner in Egypt. They were never to lose sight of how that felt when they lived in the land of promise. Instead, such remembrance was to prompt them to love those in the same situation.
The covenant Lord had fulfilled His promise to Abraham to make him as numerous as the stars of heaven (see Gen. 15:5; 22:17; 26:4). Now, in light of such fulfillment, Israel was to fear Him, hold fast to Him, serve Him, and swear by His name (Deut. 10:19-20). They had seen His great and terrifying works in Egypt and in the wilderness, works that He had done for them, His covenant people (see Ps. 105:23-45). In response, they were to give Him their very hearts.
But how could they do this? Israel was just as helpless to obey as you and I are. Their hearts, like ours, were “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9). They were inclined to love themselves, not the Lord. They were inclined to serve the gods of this world, not the one, living and true God. Israel’s history confirms this. Throughout the Old Testament we are reminded of Israel’s failure to fear, love, serve, and obey the Lord. But the Old Testament also hints that their sin is not the end of the story. The promise of the better Adam and better Israel is woven all throughout the Old Testament in promises, prophecies, sacrifices, the rite of circumcision, the Passover lamb, and other types and ordinances.
As we open up the pages of the New Testament, we learn who this better Israel is—Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the light of the world. He came from heaven to earth in order to keep that which we could not keep (the law) and to pay that which we could not pay (the debt for sin). He purchased for us not only reconciliation with God the Father, but also an eternal inheritance with Him in the new heaven and the new earth. He delivered us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. How then shall we live in light of such glorious grace? We are to fear, love, obey, and serve the Lord with all our heart (see John 14:15, 23; 1 John 2:3-6).
How will you answer someone who asks you what it means to walk with the Lord? Deuteronomy 10:12-22 is a good place to start. We are to give God our whole heart. Jesus said the same, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37).
Sarah Ivill (ThM, Dallas Theological Seminary) is a Reformed author, wife, homeschooling mom, Bible study teacher, and conference speaker who lives in Matthews, North Carolina, and is a member of Christ Covenant Church (PCA). To learn more, please visit www.sarahivill.com.
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is member supported and operates only by your faithful support. Thank you.
Place for Truth is a voice of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Place for Truth and the mission of the Alliance.