Intense in their significance, fresh in their solemnity, as when Moses uttered them to the listening multitudes on the farther shores of Jordan, the echo of these warning words rolls to us across the centuries. They express the formative principle, the regulating conception, the inspiring influence, of every greatly Christian life. The very differentia of such a life that is, its distinguishing feature is this, that it is spent always and consciously in the presence of God.
From the fact that we stand before God we gather: (1) A lesson of warning. Surely there is a warning for the forgetful a startling, for the guilty a terrible, even for the good man a very solemn warning in the thought that not only our life in its every incident, but even our heart in its utmost secrets, lies naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. (2) The thought that we stand before God involves not only a sense of warning, but a sense of elevation, of ennoblement. It is a sweet and a lofty doctrine, the highest source of all the dignity and grandeur of life. (3) A third consequence of life spent consciously in God's presence is a firm, unflinching, unwavering sense of duty. A life regardful of duty is crowned with an object, directed by a purpose, inspired by an enthusiasm, till the very humblest routine carried out conscientiously for the sake of God is elevated into moral grandeur, and the very obscurest office becomes an imperial stage on which all the virtues play. (4) The fourth consequence is a sense of holiness. God requires not only duty, but holiness. He searcheth the spirits; He discerneth the very reins and heart. (5) This thought encourages us with a certainty of help and strength. The God before whom we stand is not only our Judge and our Creator, but also our Father and our Friend. He is revealed to us in Christ, our elder Brother in the great family of God.
F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth,p. 1.
Reference: Deuteronomy 29:18. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xii., No. 723.