Today you are making this agreement with the LORD: he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways… And today the LORD is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you. This two sided agreement is called forming a covenant. It is not surprising that God would have expectations of us. That we agree to those expectations, following the commands of God, is what believers do. What is surprising is that God agrees to the expectations we have of divine favor. The whole history of Israel is a long negotiation about the terms of that covenant. When the people don’t live up to their end of the bargain and ignore the commandments God leaves them to their own devices and the result is war, conquest, destruction, exile. When the people reform and promise to fulfill the covenant God brings restoration, renewal, recovery. But with a twist. God doesn’t restore things as they were before but always ups the ante leading eventually to the new covenant which Jesus brings.
