Deuteronomy 32:7-9 – Our divine obligation

God asserted that His faithfulness was not without evidence. They could be traced and authenticated through the history of His dealings with them down through the generations. So in Deuteronomy 32:7, He challenged the people of Israel to go and inquire about it. If they were willing to find out, they could start with their family line. God challenged each of them to go and inquire from his own father and be informed. Or they could also check with their elders, and they would be told about God’s faithfulness toward them.  

Deuteronomy 32:8 made it clear that it was God who had set the boundary of each nation and gave to each their inheritance. This was also Paul’s claim in Acts 17:25. He told the Athenians that it was God, who had “…made from one man every nation  of mankind to live on the all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.” But in Deuteronomy 32:9, God made known that in His allotment of the inheritance to each nation, He had a special consideration for the people of Israel. By special arrangement, He had singled out the children of Israel to be His chosen people. By His covenant with Jacob, their forefather, Israel as a nation became His treasured possession.   

The special honor God had bestowed on their children was for them to be a means of blessings to the rest of the earth. With their special relationship with God, they now have an obligation to discharge. They were not called so that they could be engrossed with the divine favor but to be agents of it. They were expected to fulfill what God told Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3, “And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing… and in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

What lesson can we glean from these three verses? In Christ, we have become God’s redemptive agents in the world. We are blessed to be a blessing to those within the sphere of our influence. Don’t be overly engrossed with the divine favor to the point that we forget our divine obligation. We are to be the light shining forth the light of Christ in a darkened world. Let’s fulfill our call!