A Word in Season: A Faithful God (Deuteronomy 7:9)

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With what kind of God do we have to do? Who is the Lord who has made covenant with his people?

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What are our expectations of him? When everything else seems to be falling apart, when there doesn't seem to be any real stability or consistency in the world, when we find our own hearts failing and fading, to what or to whom can we truly turn and where can we find rest for our souls?

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When God brought Israel up out of Egypt, he spoke to them through the prophet

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Moses. And Moses said to God's people in Deuteronomy 7, that you are a holy people to the

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Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.

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This is the very language that the apostle Peter picks up and uses of God's new covenant people.

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There is this identifying, this defining, this distinguishing, this selecting, this sovereign love and grace that has been set upon the people of God's choice.

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And Moses underlines in Israel's day what Peter would underline in ours.

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The Lord did not set his love on you or choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples, but because the

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Lord loves you and because you would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.

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And have we not been delivered from a far greater bondage? And has God not shown himself abundantly loving and gracious toward us?

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Has God not dealt with us beyond anything we could ever truly merit or deserve, saving us from our sins in the very teeth of our rebellions and transgressions?

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What then do we rely on? Who do we rely on? What is our confidence that we will be kept safe to the very end?

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Therefore know, says Moses in chapter seven and verse nine of Deuteronomy, that the

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Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments.

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This is the God whom we serve. The Lord your God, the covenant

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Lord God, he is God. There's something here of God's absolute supremacy, his sovereignty, his self -sufficiency, his own identity in himself as well as in relation to us.

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You have God in all his majesty, his transcendent glory as the creator apart from his creatures.

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And yet God in relation with the creation that he has made, God in saving relationship with the people upon whom he has set his love.

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And he is a faithful God. This is one of the things that defines him.

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His word does not fall to the ground. His truth is absolutely sure. His words, both of promise and of threatening are absolutely certain.

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God can be relied upon, not only in his judgments upon the wicked, but also in his preservation of and blessing upon those whom he draws to himself.

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God in the new covenant has established for his people, not only the righteousness which is in Christ to cover us, but because of those purchased blessings on Calvary that he will go on working in us, never leaving us nor forsaking us, but keeping covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments.

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God goes on at work in us. He has undertaken that we shall go on loving him and keeping his commandments.

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He has secured this for us through the death of his son and the sending of his spirit, taking up residence in our hearts, writing his law upon the fleshy tablets of our own hearts that we may now walk before him as his people and he will ever be our

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God. And when we ourselves are frail and failing, and when the world is shaking and rocking, and when the kingdoms of the world are falling, we have a kingdom that cannot be shaken because we have a king who is unshakable, a

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God who keeps covenant and mercy. And there is our abiding security.