Deuteronomy 9:9
When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water: When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:
Deuteronomy 9:9 stands within Deuteronomy 4-11, which gives instruction all need in order to understand God's dealings with His people. It belongs to the lessons of Deuteronomy 9-12 that Moses was charged to repeat to the people so that no member of the congregation was left in ignorance regarding duty. Moses went up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with His people, and abode there forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water.
At the end of the forty days and forty nights the Lord delivered and gave to Moses the two tables of stone, written with the finger of God with all the words which the Lord spoke in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly. The giving of the tables made a covenant in which the Lord declared that if His people would obey His law He would give them life and prosperity. What Moses received during the forty days was the words of the covenant, the ten holy precepts engraved by the finger of Omnipotence, and that law was placed in the ark.
He did this on special occasions, felt no pangs of hunger, was lifted above the human state and specially sustained by the glory of God that enshrouded him. He was not tempted and harassed by a vile and powerful foe as the Son of God was in the wilderness of temptation.
That law will be brought forth in the day of judgment as God's flawless standard, and every deed will be compared with it. Business transactions among church members must therefore be done in high, holy rectitude with no oppression, selfishness, or unrighteous judgment, and every responsible man must test his transactions by that law now and ask whether he will be unashamed when measured by it, before probation closes. The same requirement rests upon each person today to learn the importance of these lessons, to live by every word of God in them, and to express these heavenly principles in all that is done and said. The instruction applies with special force to every soul carrying responsibilities in connection with sanitarium work, requiring careful observance of all the directions God has given, from the greatest to that which may seem the least.