Again they are reminded of the primary importance of loving and obeying the Lord. Loving and obeying go together. This is not an Old Testament concept, it is a Biblical concept, for Jesus said "If you love me you will obey my commands" (John 14:15).
The danger was that descendants would not have experienced the things that God had done in Egypt in setting them free, all the plagues that were unleashed against Egypt, what happened at the Red Sea, and the way God disciplined the Israelites in the wilderness.
So what were they to do about this? Observe all His commands. Then they would experience victory in the land, and they would do this by seeing the Lord's power working in and through their lives.
There is an important principle at work here. We need to remember what has happened in the past, and to learn from it. But we also need to continue to experience the working of the Lord in our lives. At the outset we experience the Lord's working by His saving us from sin, being rescued from situations. We were helpless and were rescued by Him. Now of course we continue to need help to overcome sin, to be forgiven, but we grow and mature by obeying the Lord and then we experience His power in overcoming situations, in winning victories. The Lord is building us up. We might start off as helpless babes, but we are not to remain that way. As it says several times in the New Testament we are to go on to maturity.
Jesus told us that we would do the things that He did. We may have been helpless and useless sinners when we were saved, but we are not to remain so. The Holy Spirit works in our lives to make us more and more like Jesus, doing the things that He did, and becoming conquerors in life.
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