Public Assembly and Hearing God's Word

It does not matter in the least what difficulties or dangers may lie before us; our God is amply sufficient for all, if only we have the sense of the Lord's presence with us, and the authority of His Word for the work in which we are engaged, we may move on with joyful confidence, in spite of ten thousand difficulties and hostile influences.
Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law: and that their children, which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it. Deut. 31:9-13.
Two things in the foregoing passage claim our special attention. First, there is the fact that the Lord attached the most solemn importance to the public assembly of His people for the purpose of hearing His Word. All Israel—men, women, children and the stranger who had cast in his lot among them, were commanded to assemble themselves together to hear the reading of the book of the law of God, that all might learn His holy will and their duty. Each member of the assembly, from the eldest to the youngest, was to be brought into direct personal contact with the revealed will of the Lord, that each one might know his solemn responsibility.