1) What is remarkable in this covenant renewal is that it brings us into the original setting. Perhaps more imporatantly with its use of the present, it speaks to us directly in our own time. This is not bible land as far away and distant; this is the bible addresses us, in our circumstance, today, right now.

 

2) Earlier, Moses admits that obedience is difficult (29:4), so this section has the sense of saying that in spite of that seeming inability, the liturgy calls us to obedience in the covenant.

 

3) This has become a bumper sticker for the pro-life viewpoint. OK, but it cannot be permitted to become only that. Waht promotes a culture of life. Dallas Willard once said something to the effect that it is as great a sin not to enjhoy life as it is to waste it.

 

4) The liturgy has the aspect of being in a trial. (See Richard Fenn's book on this point).

 

5) I contend that the entire wisdom corpus is commentary on seeking the path of life and rejecting the path of deaht. Pope John Paul II did important work in speaking of a culture of death that aflcits contemporary social life.

 

6) It stirs the Reformed tradition's soul to see such an emphasis on idolatry as the primary problem in our relationship with God and the impetus toward disobedience.