Law and Promise – The Kingdom Curriculum II (6)

Law and Promise

“And if the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers – provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God and by walking every his ways…” Deuteronomy 19:8, 9

It is characteristic of God to lead His people to embrace His will by holding out to them precious and very great promises, the end of which is to bring them into intimate and personal communion with Himself (2 Pt. 1:4). God promised Adam and Eve life. He promised Abraham blessing and to be a blessing, as well as a seed to bless all the families of the earth. He promised Israel a land in which to unpack all the promises of God and to enjoy all the liberty and life for which He had redeemed them.

In many ways the land of Canaan stands as a symbol for all the promises of God. There is where the people would know the blessing of God. There they would increase and subdue the ground, making it abundantly fruitful and prospering themselves. In the land they would become a source of blessings to all the nations of the earth (Deut. 4:5-8). The land, for Old Testament Israel, was thus the staging-ground and symbol of the whole divine economy that God intended to implement with His people (cf. Ps. 105:7-11). In the New Testament the land serves a similar function, except that it is enlarged to represent all the earth and the filling of the earth with the better promises of Christ’s covenant (Eph. 6:3; Heb. 7-10).

But the key to possessing the precious and very great promises of God is obedience to God’s Law. God wants us to know life, liberty, love, and holiness. These are the hallmarks of the full and abundant life for which we have been redeemed in Christ Jesus. The only way to improve in each of these areas is not by following the inclinations of our hearts, or some vaguely described ethic of love, but by submitting to the heart of God, as He reveals it in His Law. The promises of God are prepared for those who have believed into Jesus and abide in and walk with Him, as both Peter and Paul insist (2 Pt. 1:2-4; Rom. 4:9-12). How then may we lay hold on these precious and very great promises? By improving our walk with the Lord, as we have seen – abiding in Him and walking in His Law, following the teaching of Christ and the Apostles and God’s original design for mankind.

If we continue ignorant of God’s Law and truant from that school of discipleship where His Kingdom curriculum obtains, we have no claim on the promises of God, and no reason to expect His blessing.

Order your copy of The Law of God today. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, Publications, Waxed Tablet, to place your order and take up the Kingdom curriculum of our Lord.

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.