Never in this world do we reach a position from which it is impossible to fall away. The dew and the rain of God's blessing are contingent on obedience; and one of the strongest incentives to obedience is devout meditation on the Word of God. It is through the letter that we arrive at the spirit; and through the written words at the Eternal Word. We must store up the sacred words of God as a farmer stores up his grain, keeping them before us, making them the familiar topics of home-talk, and exercising ourselves in them. Let us specially ponder Deuteronomy 11:22-25, appropriating them in a spiritual sense, and claiming their equivalents in the inner life.
All along our lives are Ebals and Gerizims, with their "Come, ye blessed" and "Depart, ye cursed." Always we are arriving at the crossways, on the one of which lies the smile, and on the other the frown, of God. Let us be attracted by the one and dissuaded from the other, till we climb the spiral staircase into the land where there is no cooling love or faltering faith. [source]
Chapter Summary: Deuteronomy 11
1Another exhortation to obedience 2by their own experience of God's great works 8by promise of God's great blessings 16and by threatenings 18A careful study is required in God's words 26The blessing and curse set before them
What do the individual words in Deuteronomy 11:26 mean?