“For the Lord, your God is God of gods and Lord of Lords. The great, the mighty, and the awesome God who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner therefore for you are sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
– Deuteronomy 10:17–19
What a great three verses. So lets put Deuteronomy 10:17–19 together. First, verse 17, “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of Lords.” In other words, there is no other God. This is the first commandment, worship the Lord alone. The second– commandment, you shall have no idols. There are no idols, no other, no gods like God. There is one God. He is God of gods, Lord of Lords. He is the great, the mighty, and the awesome God. What a picture of God’s power and majesty and glory.
We worship you today as God over all people and things.
He is the great God. He’s the mighty God. He’s the awesome God who is not partial and takes no bribe. So God is true and God is just and God is righteous in every way. So this is just a depiction of the glory and the greatness of God, specifically the might and the awesomeness of God. That’s verse 17. Then verse 18, “He executes justice.” So how does he execute justice? How does he show his power, specifically verse 18, for the fatherless and for the widow? “And he loves the Sojourner, giving him food and clothing.”
See the picture of God here. He shows his might and his power and his justice on behalf of those who are in need, on behalf of the vulnerable, on behalf of those without a father or mother, the orphan, and the widow and the sojourner. And so this picture of God showing his power on behalf of those in need, on behalf of the vulnerable and weak. And then, now connected with verse 19, God says to his people, “Love the sojourner therefore, for you are sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
Deuteronomy 10:17–19 Leads Us to Worship God
In other words, Deuteronomy 10:19 takes this picture of God in Deuteronomy 17 and 18 and says, “You be a reflection of him. You love the Sojourner.” We see all throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, you love the fatherless. You love the widow. And You are a reflection of the character of God. So let’s just pray as we put those together.
God, we praise you according to Deuteronomy 10:17. You are God of gods, Lord of lords. You are the Lord our God. And You are the great, you are the mighty, you are the awesome God. God, we praise you for your greatness, for your might, for your awesome majesty. There’s no one like you. You alone are God and we worship you today as God. We worship you today as our God. We worship you today as God over all. And we praise you that you are not partial and that you take no bribe. We praise you for your justice. We praise you for your righteousness. Everything about you, oh God, is just and everything about you is righteous.
Deuteronomy 10:17–19 Leads Us to Praise God
And God, we praise you specifically according to verse 18 for the way you execute justice for the fatherless and the widow and the sojourner, for the way you help the weak, for the way you work and show your power on behalf of those in need. God, we praise you for your love for the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner.
And so we pray based on verse 19 that we would be a reflection of you, God, that we would love the fatherless and the widow, that we would look after the fatherless and the widow. God, we know, we know your word makes this clear all throughout James 1:27, religion that you say is pure and faultless as this to look after orphans and widows in their distress. God, please help us to care for orphans as a reflection of your might and your awesome majesty, to care for widows as a reflection of your mind in your awesome majesty, to care for the sojourner, to care for those who are separated from their homeland and struggling in so many different ways, oftentimes driven by their homeland.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray for Others
When we think about the refugee crisis in the world today in so many different countries, God, we pray that you’d help us to care well for the sojourner. God, please help us as your people to be a reflection of your might and your greatness and you’re awesome majesty in the way we love and care for the vulnerable and the weak around us and far from us.
God make us a people who care well for the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner in ways that glorify your name as the one who executes justice on their behalf and loves them. Especially, oh God, please help us to discern what this looks like in each of our lives and in our families and in our churches and as your church and as your people. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
