Deuteronomy 10.
HOW good of God to still go on with a people that had sinned so against Him! It is just that way in which He is acting now towards the world which crucified His Son; He is still sending out the message of forgiveness to everyone who turns to Him.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” is glad news to all who know themselves sinners before God.
Israel had broken the law; it could not then be set up in the sight of the nation as the rule they lived by, for sinners they were, guilty before God. The law is therefore put inside the ark; the sign of God’s presence, where blood, the blood of a spotless substitute was seen as the sign of the acceptance of God’s people; the law was hidden, for it could not save: but Only told their condemnation.
The death of Aaron, and his son’s taking his place as the high priest (verse 6) tell us that the way of approach to God was to remain open, for a poor sinner must, while grace lasts, be able to come to Him in the power of the shed blood.
This, it seems, is why the tribe of Levi is mentioned here, too, for God would have His servants still at work for Him in the world.
Verses 1 to 9 are a parenthesis, and verse 10 connects with the last verse of chapter 9.
The people, though they deserved to die because of their flagrant sin, were not to be destroyed, and Moses as their leader was to go on before them, that they might take possession of the promised land. What ways then should those redeemed people show in their lives,—surely none but what were pleasing to the Lord their God. How much they should have loved Him for the great love wherewith He loved them, and out of that love service to Him would grow. Pride and self-will should not anymore be shown. but the very opposite, and they were to love the strangers who would come among them, because they had been strangers too. God thus reminds His people of their past, and His wonderful works for them.
ML 11/02/1924