March 30

25. When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have remained long in the land, and shall corrupt yourself, and make a graven image of the likeness of any thing, and shall do evil in the sight of the LORD thy God, to provoke him to anger:

26. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from on the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed.

27. And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whether the LORD shall lead you.

28. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

29. But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find God, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

30. When thou art in translation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient to his voice:

31. (For the LORD thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers, which he sware unto them.

32. For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it?

33. Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?

34. Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

35. Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him.

36. Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee, and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire; and thou heardest no words out of the midst of the fire.

37. And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt:

38. To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.

39 Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD be it God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else

40 Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that a may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the LORD thy God give, in thee, for ever.

"All sin is hateful to God, and none but the cleansed, perfect soul shall stand before Him in the presence of His glory; nor any in whom iniquity hath dominion shall stand accepted in the presence of His grace; but yet no particular sin is so hateful to Him as idolatry is. For this is not only a trespassing against His laws, but a disclaiming or rejecting His very Sovereignty itself . . . The first commandment is not like the rest, which require only obedience to particular laws in a particular action; but it establishes the very relations of sovereign and subject, and requires a constant acknowledgment of these relations, and makes it high treason against the God of heaven in any that shall violate that command. Every crime is not treason: it is one thing to miscarry in a particular case, and another thing to have other gods before and besides the Lord, the only God. Now, this is the sin of every worldling; he hath taken down God from the throne of his soul, and set up the flesh and the world in His stead; these he valueth, and magnifieth, and delighteth in, these have his very heart, while God that made it and redeemed him is set light by."—Baxter.

"Sirs, the thing that we are reproving is, that the world gets so much of your heart and God so little. The creature should but have a small portion of your affections, if it be not the creature, but God that is your portion. But alas! many are like the great man that, being asked if he ever saw an eclipse of the sun, said, 'He had so much ado upon earth, he never had time to look up to heaven.' Just so may it be said of multitudes in the world: they are so much taken up with the things of time, the vain and perishing things of the world, they never get time to look up unto and call upon God."—Ralph Erskine.

Closet Promise.—I will be thy King.—Hosea xiii. 10.

How glad we are that He Himself is our King! For we are so sure that He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself in this inner kingdom which we cannot govern at all. Lord, be Thou my King this day! Reign more absolutely in me than ever before.