by Giles Day

Created on: March 02, 2010   Last Updated: March 04, 2010

It is imperative, when studying any portion of Scripture, that we remember the context which the verses were taken from. Verse twelve was written during a transitory time period of Israel's history. The Jewish people are in the wilderness between the time Moses led them out of Egypt and before they came to the promised land (Canaan).  No one, not even Moses, dreamed that theyb weremore than forty years from reaching that objective. The Jews still had many lessons to learn, some of them extremely difficult and painful lessons to endure.

A key word in verse twelve is "covenant". There were a total of seven covenants, but it is necessary for us to only consider two of these at this time.  The first covenant is found in Exodus 19:5. Here God promises the Israelites His total blessing and help if they will only adhere to the things He has commanded. In these verese, we find that the nation of Israel is exiting Egypt, and the whole land is before them. They had no reason the beieve that any evil thing lay ahead of them as they headed out under God's direction. They had surely witnessed HIs great works on the hapless Egyptians and Pharoah, and would have been on a spiritual high. There is a problem with so called covenant theology. It simply doesn't work. Time and time again has proven that God will never break His covenants,but human beings will. As physical beings,we know that we can never live up to the perfect nature of God.Although many have tried, people have failed to reach this standard, and will continue to do so.

However, God understands and forgives our shortcomings. (I John 1:9) It is important for us to take God at HIs word and believe He will do what He has promised. An excellent example of God's unchanging and unflinching nature is the promises He gave to Abraham, i.e. the fourth covenant. (Genesis 12:1-4) At this time, the nation of Israel was passing from  the dispensation of human govenment to being governed by the laws God had handed down. (Deut. 7:12) The first eleven verses contain many portions of that law. As we are fully aware, due to the many recorded instances in the Scriptures, Israel would go on to break evey one nof those commandments in the years to follow. They violated even the tencommandments, given toMoses on the Mount.(Ex. 20) The children of Israel proved repeatedly that without total commitment to the will of God, it is impossible to keep HIs commandments.(Numbers 14:24,30)  The people of God,regardless of the age in which they are living,must keep the commandments of God without wavering or compromising.

Christians are also under the law of God, but no longer under the law of Moses. Our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior establishes the law of God in our hearts because we love HIm. We are under the dispensation of grace, and therefore, stand in the liberty which Christ has given us. (Galatians 5:1) This liberty does not in any way give us the right to abuse God's grace. (Gal. 5:13) This tends to be a very hard concept formany Christans to hear, accept and comply with.  Does God show mercy? Of course He does! For example, He did not execute a death sentence on Cain, even though Cain had committed murder. He did not leave blind Samson alone in the temple of Dagon (Judges 16:23)  The whale spit out Jonah within three days.David was not put to death although he had been directly involved in the death of Uriah. (II Sam.11) This was not always the way God handled things,l and people today shold not depend on God showing mercy repeatedly. What we can count and depend on is the righteous justice of God.

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