Deuteronomy 29:18

Lest there should be among you man or woman, or family, or tribe,....

15 , where he is in like manner cautioning us to take heed of those that would seduce us from the Christian faith; they are the weeds or tares in a field, which, if let alone, will overspread the whole field. A little of this leaven will be in danger of infecting the whole lump. [2.] His security in the sun. He promises himself impunity, though he persists in his impiety,

It was of the greatest consequence to impress all with the strong and abiding conviction, that while the covenant of grace had special blessings belonging to it, it at the same time had curses in reserve for transgressors, the infliction of which would be as certain, as lasting and severe. This was the advantage contemplated in the law being rehearsed a second time.

THE people of Israel, after all the wonderful things which God had done for them, should have felt themselves bound forever to their father's God. They had received the clearest possible proof that Jehovah alone was the living and true God. How could they debase themselves to worship graven images when they had seen such signs and wonders worked by their great I AM? Surely idolatry after such a history as theirs must have been sinful to the worst degree.

THE people of Israel, after all the wonderful things which God had done for them, should have felt themselves bound forever to their father's God. They had received the clearest possible proof that Jehovah alone was the living and true God. How could they debase themselves to worship graven images when they had seen such signs and wonders worked by their great I AM? Surely idolatry after such a history as theirs must have been sinful to the worst degree. They were, however, in great danger from two or three circumstances which in the chapter before us are set before them as a ground of caution. "You know how you dwelt in the land of Egypt," is the first caution. They had dwelt so long in the midst of the idolatrous Egyptians that it would have been strange if they had not become tinctured with the idolatrous spirit which was so powerful in the land of Ham. Alas, Israel's hosts drank deep into Egypt's superstitions, and not long had they been in the wilderness before they made a golden ox, contemptuously called by Moses a golden calf, in imitation of the ox so solemnly adored in Egypt. Probably the mixed multitude never wholly ceased from idol-worship, for we find it said in Amos, "Have you offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? And you have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which you made to yourselves." The Egyptians were infamous among all nations as almost indiscriminate worshippers of innumerable objects. They not only worshipped beasts, comely in proportion and useful to men, but they bowed down before the snake and the crocodile. They worshipped the beetle that is engendered from filth and the frog that comes up from the slime.