Exodus 19:5a 'Now if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant, (The past places and markers in our life where the Lord has saved us and brought us out, just as He delivered Israel from Egypt through the Red Sea, are the very reasons He now has a right to call us into obedience to Him. The Lord has brought His people to Mount Sinai to invite them into a new relationship with Him. From His earliest call on their ancestor Jacob and now to His call to a great people, the Lord is inviting them into covenant with Him. He is declaring in this sovereign vow that He will be their Protector and Deliverer, that He will be the God of this people. Their part of this heavenly covenant is that they promise to trust and obey Him. The Lord's earlier covenant with their forefather Abraham was one-sided only, and His blessing over His people had not been dependent upon them. He had simply declared that He would bless Abraham and his descendants. Now, as He takes His people deeper into relationship with Him, He makes parameters for them that they need to follow. Through our obedience, He asks us to acknowledge that He is Lord and Savior and to commit our lives fully to Him. Today, we are the blessed recipients of this same covenant the Lord made with the Israelites so long ago. He declares He will be our God and that we will be His people, that He will protect and provide for us as we trust and obey Him. Today we are inheritors of the Sinai covenant.) then out of all nations you will be My treasured possession.' (Just as He promised Abraham and his descendants, the Lord would call Israel His Own special people, a peculiar people, His Own cherished possession, because they would be a people acquired only through the decision and exertions of God the Owner, and not by any merit or effort on the part of the people. Because we belong to Him and are His redeemed, He offers us today a life-time bargain of the ages. He promises us that we, too, are His treasure, His beloved, His holy people set apart for a special relationship with Him, owned, held, and sealed by the Lord to be His very own. The Lord calls us His possession, His very inheritance, a standing that He Himself has brought about and extended to us.)
