“He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.” – Deuteronomy 10:21¹

Deuteronomy 10:12-22 is a pivotal part of Moses’ final sermon as the great redeemer prophet answers the question, “What does the LORD your God require of you?” As best I can tell, the verses command that no less than eight realities are to be true about God’s people. And these realities are grounded in at least eight different realities true about God Himself. So what we have then is a majestic summation of who God is and what God does. Five truths are particularly important to notice:

1. God is sovereign. 10:14 says, “Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.” To say that God is sovereign is to say that He is Lord. He is the One who is powerful over all things and the One who controls all things. Nothing in the highest realms of heaven or the lowest depths of earth are outside His authority. To say He is sovereign also means that no person or people group is outside His sovereign authority, for 10:15 says, “Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples.” Our God sovereignly rules over the universe, governing His creation and choosing His own people.
2. God is supreme. 10:17 says, “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords.” Our Lord has no rivals; He stands above, over, and beyond anything or anyone that sets itself or himself up as a power to be reckoned with.
3. God is strong. 10:17 continues by calling God “the great, the mighty, and the awesome God.” His nature is exalted and glorious indeed. The word “mighty” has military overtones and in the immediate context it would have recalled God’s mighty deliverance of His people from Egypt, where He faced off in battle with the Egyptians and left their army floating in the Red Sea. To oppose this strong God is to guarantee defeat.
4. God is sinless. 10:17 ends by saying He “is not partial and takes no bribe.” A refusal to take bribes and show no partiality was the ideal for an Old Testament judge. Partiality and taking bribes was proof that person was unrighteous or unjust, thus sinful. But our God is utterly sinless.
5. God is surprising. Notice how this passage ends in 10:21-22, “He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.” To the Israelites this was proof that God is faithful to His promise for He made a covenant with Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. It also shows us that God’s sovereignty, supremacy, strength, and sinlessness means He governs and rules in surprising ways. He put seventy people in Egypt, enslaved them to a pagan ruler, and made them as numerous as the stars of heaven. It is normal for God to reveal His faithfulness by afflicting His people (Ps. 119:57). This is surprising to us.

How then are we to respond to this kind of God? In 10:12-13 Moses gives five basic responses, by saying God’s people are to fear, follow, love, serve, and obey.  10:16 sums up these five responses by saying, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” This language, however strange it is for 21st century ears, simply means that God’s people are to be covenantally set apart by faith. Faith is the summary response to God and 10:21 couples it with praise by saying, “He is your praise.” See then that God’s personality demands our faithful praise.

I am sure many of you have experienced the demands of personality without realizing it. For example, my son Hudson has a tender personality, he is the kind of child that will melt and wither under a disciplinary gaze from daddy. His personality in some ways demands that I aim to not be overly strong with him when I require his obedience and respect. Now Haddon, our little four month old, loves to stand – which he can’t do on his own. So if I’m sitting down and holding him, his personality that always wants to stand up means I will quickly prop him up so he can extend his legs and look around. Personality informs how we respond to one other.

And this is true with God. But see that His personality not only informs how we respond to Him, but demands how we respond to Him. His personality demands our faithful praise. I wonder what it is that regularly occupies your praise. As you walk through each day, what person or thing is most praised with your thoughts, words, and actions? If you find yourself praising things in this world more than the God of this world, could that reality be rooted in a small understanding of who God is? A large understanding of God is the bedrock of large praise for God.

We praise what we study and we study what we praise. What then do you study? Let the study of God be foremost in your life, for all the gold and silver in the world cannot compare to knowing God.