N THE sacrifice of Isaac Abraham obeyed the commandment (continued)
of words is here used to express the divine will, to which Abraham was obedient, ''my voice, my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws"', which may intimate that Abraham's obedience was universal: he obeyed the original laws of nature, the revealed laws of divine worship, particularly that of circumcision, and all the extraordinary precepts God gave him, as that of quitting his country, and (which some think is more especially referred to) the offering up of his son, which Isaac himself had reason enough to remember. Note, those only shall have the benefit and comfort of God's covenant with their godly parents that tread in the steps of their obedience.
2. Moses CALLS FOR OBEDIENCE
So Moses concludes his general exhortation to obedience in Deuteronomy xi. 27ff. His management is very affecting, and such as one would think should have engaged them for ever to God, and should have left the impression upon them never to be worn out.
He sums up all his arguments for obedience in two words, "The blessing and the curse"' (verse 26). That is, the rewards and the punishments, as they stand in the promises and the threatenings, which are the great sanctions of the law, taking hold of hope and fear, those two handles of the soul, by which it is caught, held and managed. These two, the blessing and the curse, he set before them.
(a) He explained them, that they might know them. He instanced in the particulars contained both in the blessing and in the curse that they might see the more fully how desirable the blessing was and how dreadful the curse.
(b) He confirmed them that they might believe them. He made it evident to them, by the proofs he produced of his own commission, that the blessing was not a fool's paradise, nor the curse a bugbear, but both real declarations of the purpose of God concerning them.
(c) He put them to their choice which of these they would have. So fairly does he deal with them, and so far is he from putting "out the eyes of these men'', as he was charged (Num. xvi. 14). They and we are plainly told on what terms we stand with Almighty God. If we be obedient we may be sure of a blessing (verse 27). But if we be disobedient we may be as sure of a curse (verse 28). "Say ye to the righteous", for God hath said it, and all the world cannot unsay it, ''that it shall be