Key Scriptures
4:25-31 [Moses warned the Israelites about their life across the Jordan. saying]… “If you become corrupt once you have settled in the land I will give you, and there make yourselves any type of carved idols…that will be the end of you. The Lord your God will disperse you to distant lands like chaff in the wind. In those desolate places only a fewof you will manage to survive. There you will be free to bow down and worship your beloved hand-made idols, your idols of wood and stone that cannot see a thing, hear a peep, or even smell their own stench. Still, in those foreign lands, if only you will seek me—seek the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength—I will be found by you. In the days ahead when hardship and trouble come upon you because of your unfaithfulness, then will you return to your loving God and follow him obediently; for the Lord your God is full of mercy and compassion and he will never abandon or forget you—leaving you to destruction. He will never renege on the covenant he made with your forefathers, a covenant he swore by himself to uphold.”
11:26-29… “This day you have a choice to make—one that leads to either blessings or curses. The blessings will come if you obediently follow the commands the Lord gives you today. The curses will follow if you fail to obey the commands the Lord gives you today and run after the idol-gods which are alien to your faith. …At the time you enter the land the Lord is giving you across the Jordan, you are to climb Mount Gerizim and declare the blessings that will result from obedience. And then climb Mount Ebal to declare the curses that will follow if you disobey.”
28:1-14 “If you listen obediently to the word of the Lord and diligently obey all his commandments that I am giving you today, he will raise you high above every other nation on earth. Each and every one of these blessings will continually pour down upon you if only you will obey the Lord your God: blessings in both town and countryside, blessings upon your children, your crops, your herds and flocks. God will bless your pantry and your bread basket; His blessings will attend your leaving home and your returning to it. God will crush any enemy who dares to attack you. …He will shape you into his holy nation, exactly as he promised. …Every other nation on Earth will know you to be God’s people and hold you in great respect. God will give you abundance and prosperity; he will fling open the gates of heaven to supply bountiful seasonal rains to enhance the works of your hands. You will have the utmost success if you will only pay heed to the commands of the Lord your God and live according to them.”
28:15-66 “On the other hand, if you do not obey the word of the Lord your God and diligently follow all the commandments and teachings that I’m giving you today, all of these curses will engulf you: You will be cursed in both town and countryside, your pantry and bread basket will be empty; your children, crops, herds and flocks will all fail to thrive; You will encounter only curses when you leave home and when you return again to it. All of your efforts will be cursed until utter failure and complete ruin come upon you for abandoning your God. He will plague you with chronic diseases, relentless pain, interminable anxiety, and persistent heat, drought, and blight until you are completely destroyed. …Your children will go into exile and you’ll grow weary constantly searching for them, powerless to do a thing. …Locusts will swarm and devour your vineyards and crops. …All of these curses will follow you and overtake you for abandoning your God and ignoring his commands. They will serve as a warning to both you and your children, for when you lived in prosperity and abundance you refused to serve the Lord with gladness of heart. Therefore God will see to it that you serve your enemies in poverty, hunger and thirst, with iron chains about your necks. He will bring a distant nation to overpower you, swooping down with talons poised, uttering incomprehensible speech—a fiercesome people without pity for young or old. They’ll take everything you own and lay siege to all your carefully fortified towns, inflicting such hardship and suffering that in utter desperation you will cannibalize your own children. …Then they will take you away captive as God scatters you across the face of the earth to places where only anxiety, despair and heartbreak reside. …And the nations roundabout will ask, ‘Why did God devastate this country? What could possibly have angered him so?’ And then they will realize: ‘Its because Israel abandoned the sacred covenant God made with their forefathers by following other gods…”
30:1-10 “When the time comes in your exile that you take seriously the power of these blessings and curses, determining that you and your children will follow the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, then God will mercifully gather you back from those distant lands, no matter how far, and restore to you every lost blessing. God will bring you back to your land of inheritance, blessing you with more prosperity and abundance, more sons and daughters, than graced even your ancestors. The Lord will soften the calloused hearts of you and your children, liberating you to fully love and obey him. …And he will once again take delight in you, as he did in your forefathers, when you obediently follow all his commands that I give you today in this covenant.”
30:11-20 “Be mindful of the fact that these commandments are actually possible to fulfill. They are not beyond your ability to obey…if you will only put them in your hearts and speak them with your lips. Therefore, today I place before you a choice between life and blessing or death and curses. Remember, if you love and follow hard after the Lord your God, every good thing will follow as well. But if you disobey and abandon him to worship idols, destruction will certainly await you in the land of promise. …Today I therefore call upon heaven and earth to bear witness that I have given you a choice between life and death, blessing and curses. I urge you to choose life. You and your children will reap countless benefits if you will but love and obey the Lord your God. If you make him the center of your life, he promises to give you many years of blessing in the land he set apart for you and your forefathers.”
Basic Message
Moses warns the nation of Israel that once they enter the Promised Land, they will come to ruin if they worship idols. As punishment God will exile them to foreign lands where they will reap the fruit of their idolatrous ways. But even there, having lost all, God will still hear and redeem his people from their plight if they repent and turn once again to him—because he is compassionate and faithful to the covenant he made with their forefathers.
Then Moses spelled out the choice Israel had and the consequences of that choice: life and blessing for obedience to God and faithfulness to the covenant, death and curses for disobedience and unfaithfulness. The blessings included peace and security in the land, productivity, and abundance for the people and their children. Neighboring nations would be in awe of their good fortune. The curses included plagues and pain, death and disease, drought and hardship, and exile to lands ruled by ruthless people. In short, utter ruin would come upon the people. Other nations would be shocked at the level of destruction.
But in their miserable state in exile, God would still listen to calls for help from a repentant people, and bring them back to the Promised Land where all their former fortunes would be restored. God himself would turn their once faithless hearts back to himself, and he would again delight in his people as he did in their forefathers.
Finally, Moses told the Israelites that the commandments were not beyond their ability to obey. They had a choice to make that day, with blessing or curses awaiting the outcome of that choice. With heaven and earth as witnesses, Moses urged the people to choose life and blessing. He reminded them that God was the source of their life and God’s will was for them to receive the many blessings he had promised to them and their forefathers.
Comments
* The divine formula was three-fold: obedience equals blessing; disobedience equals curses; but disobedience with its severe punishment could always lead back to blessing through repentance and a return to obedience. This theme underscores the whole history of God’s dealing with ancient Israel and reveals much in terms of God’s character and design for the world. His will, his intention is for his called ones is to be always blessed. That is part of the original plan in Eden and runs right through scripture to God’s plan for the Kingdom of Christ, who ushers in a new heaven and earth. But unfaithfulness and disobedience can never be overlooked. God must and will punish sin, and the wages of sin is irrevocable death and destruction. Such is the fabric of the moral universe God created for us to inhabit. Such is the power of our choices.
* Yet beyond the severe and inevitable effects of sin is a living, loving, compassionate God who always provides a redemptive path back to himself and the blessings he desires to give to his people. The story of the Bible is the story of God providing the redemptive means for Israel, for the rest of the world, and for each of us as individuals to come into right relationship with him. And unless he provides that means himself, the whole of humanity is trapped in the cult-de-sac of sin’s devastating consequences.
* The apparent strictness with which God treated Israel—untold horrors being unleashed for disobedience to the covenant—can only be understood in the context of the great privileges and responsibilities that attended their being God’s channel of blessing to the rest of the world. He chose Israel among all other nations to be the sole channel through which salvation would be made available to the rest of humanity. They were to be set apart from all the pagan nations around as a righteous people who truly represented the high and holy God of the Universe. With the position came immense potential for blessing, but with it also came enormous potential for destruction. “To whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48). God put all his eggs in one basket, so to speak, and he could not allow Israel to become like all the other nations that adopted customs and behaviors that erroneously reflected the pure holiness of God and the high moral standards he set for humankind. To own up to their great privilege and responsibility as God’s messengers to the world, Israel had to be held accountable for abdicating their high calling. God chose to use them and, although he allowed them to turn away from himself and the covenant, he would see to it that their failure would not mean the end of his magnificent plans for the whole of the human race.
* One wonders how Israel could possibly abandon their covenant with God knowing full well that the results would be nothing short of horrendous. Surely the answer is that they would abandon it not all at once, as a single willful act, but bit by bit, lie by lie, injustice by injustice until the covenant and relationship with God had been fractured beyond repair. Culture changes one act at a time, like a glacier inching its way down the mountainside day after day until it gouges out a huge valley of solid granite, totally transforming the entire landscape. The Song of Songs says “it’s the little foxes that spoil the vineyard” (2:15). The lesson for us all is that every act counts, whether for good or for evil. In time each will add to a cumulative effect that not only alters our own lives, but alters the society and world in which we live. With every choice and act we must be the good we wish to see in the world. If we do not, we contribute to its failure.
Biblical Themes
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15
