Deuteronomy 5

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. V.—Sinful men must have God’s will declared to them, line upon line, precept upon precept. But the covenant of grace made with Jesus Christ is the great foundation of all our holy obedience: and there can be no happy covenant of duty between God and a soul but through his mediation. Public covenants of duty between God and parents bind the children to all generations; and it is at their peril if they become ashamed of them. But all obedience to God’s law must be immediately founded on what God is, and is to us, and hath done for us. And Oh what great pleasure God takes in granting himself to be our God in Christ? Often he repeats this grant even in the short abridgment of his law; and many hundred times in the Bible; that wherever we read, hear, or meditate, we may be constrained to believe that he is God, even our own God, by his new covenant grant of himself to us. Indeed every peculiar circumstance which men can be in hath its own peculiar enforcements of duty to God and our neighbour. In what a solemn manner was God’s law delivered! and it is a mercy that we have his word written for us, for the greater certainty and the better spreading thereof. But it is still a greater mercy that we have one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; and so receive the law as fulfilled in Christ. And it is most acceptable to God when sinful men, terrified by the holy law, kindly flee to Jesus and his mediation; when our hearts are right with him; and especially when the views of his covenant, his law, and the mediation of Christ, and our own vows, concur in animating us to the greatest exactness in all holy obedience