About two months after leaving Egypt, the Israelites arrived at Sinai. They had seen the plagues, they had walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, and they were subsisting on bread received daily from heaven. Now, God invited them to deepen their relationship with Him. Here is His invitation, delivered by the prophet Moses:
Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:
And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.
Exodus 19:4-6
God opens the invitation with a reminder: I have been taking care of you all along. If you look backward, you will see a continuous stream of divine interventions on your behalf. You know that I can bless you.
But now, He offers them something more. They can be His “peculiar treasure,” uniquely valuable to Him.
If God had been blessing them all along, why did they need to make a covenant with Him now? Nephi offers some insight as he reminds his brothers of their spiritual heritage:
He loveth those who will have him to be their God. Behold, he loved our fathers, and he covenanted with them, yea, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and he remembered the covenants which he had made; wherefore, he did bring them out of the land of Egypt.
1 Nephi 17:40
The miraculous blessings which the Israelites had already received were also covenant-based. God delivered them in fulfillment of promises He had made to their ancestors. Now, He was inviting them to enter a their own covenant relationship with Him, to “have him to be their God.”
President Russell M. Nelson explained that, while God loves all of His children, our relationship with Him changes when we choose to make covenants with Him. “Now we are bound together,” he taught. “Because of our covenant with God, He will never tire in His efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust His merciful patience with us” (“The Everlasting Covenant,” Liahona, October 2022).
Today I will be grateful for my covenants with God. I will cherish the opportunity to draw closer to Him, to be one of His people, and to become more holy.
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