A Special Treasure

A Special Treasure – Deuteronomy 27:9-10 God's people are a special treasure on earth. Be silent and listen; today you have become the people of the Lord your God. They are people who keep His commandments. They entered Canaan, now there was a solemn ratification (confirmation of the validity or veracity of what has been said to the people) solemn (celebrated with extraordinary, important pomp or "formalism") of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel and the book of the covenant was presented.

I. O Israel, you have become the people of the Lord your God.

A. Therefore, you shall hear the voice of the Lord your God.

1. Now the people who have God will keep His commandments and His statutes, "which I command them today."

2. The people that God chooses is a special treasure.

3. God takes absolute charge; He doesn't need your help. He has what He has already said, He does not need the voice of the people.

4. It was already established by the Bible.

5. Before it was the law, today it is grace through Jesus, who raises up the people.

6. (Exodus 19:5) They must "listen to His voice and keep His covenants."

7. Since they had been saved by Him, it is natural that He insisted that they were to be ruled by Him.

8. "You will be My special treasure."

9. God here asserts His sovereignty over His property in all creation, in Israel His peculiar treasure, a kingdom "of priests and holy people. (Exodus 19:6)

10. By giving him a special revelation, He established for them (to cause something to begin to be formed) divine ordinances and promises that include eternal life, by sending them to the prophets and pouring out His Spirit upon them, He distinguished them from all other nations and dignified (honors, magnifies) them above all peoples.

11. (Psalm 29:11) Jehovah will give strength to His people; Jehovah will bless His people with peace.

12. In the hurricane described in this Psalm great power was displayed; in the gentle calm after the storm, it is promised "that this power will be the strength of the elect."

13. (Psalm 100:3) Keep like a flock.

14. "Know thyself" (is a wise saying or saying, but knowing our God is a superior wisdom; and it is highly debatable whether a man can know himself before he knows God.

15. Jehovah is God in the fullest, absolute, and exclusive sense.

16. He is only God; To know Him in this "disposition" and to show our knowledge through obedience, trust, submission, zeal, and love is an achievement that only grace can bestow.

17. From the reasons for this exhortation we learn that such is our natural atheism, that we need again and again to be instructed, that the Lord is God; by which and through which are all things. Dickson

18. He made us, and not us ourselves.

19. Alas, brother! Renouncing honor for ourselves "is a necessary part" of true reverence, like "attributing all glory to the Lord."

20. He did it all without the help or concurrence (participation) of another.

21. There was no one to help Him or cooperate in the least with Him in the work of creation.

22. "Those who help" or concur with another to do a thing "may claim part of it," but there is no opportunity here for any claim, since the Lord did it all.

23. Only Him. David Clarkson

24. Melanchthon when he was bereaved and afflicted at the body of his son, in Oresde, July 12, 1559.

25. Consolation of Melanchthon: But in "He made us; His people we are” there is a rich mine of consolation and admonition because the Creator is also "our Owner" "His heart is united to His creature" and the creature owes it entirely to Him, without "whom he would not have received his being," and would not continue to live. F. Delilzoch

26. The Masoretic (Jews who make faithful copies of the Holy Scriptures), by altering a letter in the Hebrew text, read: "He made us, and we are His," or to Him we belong.

27. Putting these two texts together, we realize that God made us, and not us "ourselves," for what we are, not ours, but His. Matthew Henry.

28. (Luke 1:17) John will go before Him.

29. This He is the Lord your God (16).

30. And yet we know that John was the forerunner of Jesus.

31. The inference (deducing) is then clear.

32. Jesus is God.

33. (Acts 15:1-9, 14) People for His name.

34. Peter had told how the Lord had opened the door of faith "for the first time to the Gentiles" through Him.

35. Paul and Barnabas had added their testimony about how the Lord had worked through them in evangelizing the "Gentiles."

36. (13) James authoritatively expressed that God's present purpose for it was to call the Gentiles ... a people for His name.

37. In essence, this was what Simon had just related.

38. (Titus 2:14) Characterized by zeal.

39. He gave Himself to purify for Himself a people of His property, that we might belong to Him, not to the world "or to ourselves."

40. We could be people zealous for good deeds.

41. (Revelation 21:3) God Himself will be with them as their God in a closer and intimate relationship. A closer communion that they could ever dream of. Amen.