Deuteronomy 28-29
And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.
Deuteronomy 28:1-3
But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.
Deuteronomy 28:15-16
Obedience or disobedience. Blessing or curse. Prosperity or tremendous destruction. The choice is clear, so take your pick. What will it be?
The LORD lays out for the people of Israel the terms of His covenant with them. He paints a glorious picture of abundant blessing for obedience but a stark picture of devastation for disobedience. They have a choice to make. And so do we.
I daresay that with the options laid out before us today, most of us consciously make the rational choice in favor of obedience, blessing, and prosperity. Who wants destruction? But then our thinking gets a little clouded, because we look around at the world and we do not always see this “formula” for blessing and curse working out as expected. We see prosperity coming to people who evidence little or no interest in following God. Meanwhile we see saints suffering. And so we doubt. (See Psalm 73.)
But then we rightly remember to look at things in the light of eternity, not just this world. We remember heaven and hell, and see that the blessing and curse formula may still work out if we consider the afterlife. So we immediately set about making resolutions to establish ourselves as citadels of righteousness and thus win the blessing. And in so doing we sow the seeds of our own downfall, not because we choose obedience, but because we think to rely on ourselves, our own strength and resources, to achieve it. And we fail.
Yes, we must by all means strive for obedience, but we must do so in humility and faith, recognizing that any power for real obedience comes not from ourselves but from the Holy Spirit because of the work of Jesus Christ. In saying this I am well ahead of our reading schedule, speaking of things not yet revealed to the Israelites. Indeed, they have yet to understand their own current scenario, so Moses says, “But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.” (Dt. 29:4) Let us lay that to heart and pray that God would indeed give us hearts to understand, eyes to see, and ears to hear, that we might rightly walk in obedience through faith in the completed work of Christ.
I don’t wish to argue with Moses, but in Deut. 29:2, he says “Your eyes have seen all that the Lord did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials and to all his land. With your own eyes you saw those great trials, those signs and great wonders, etc…” However, this can’t be true! All those people have died except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb. The best explanations I can come up with are: all the people didn’t die — only those 20 and older did; or the translation is slightly messed up; or Moses gave part of this speech at a different time; or ??? Any other possibilities?
Good observation, Katey! But I think your first explanation is correct. There are plenty of Israelites still alive who walked with Moses through the Red Sea, all 40-60 years old. The very youngest of those would not remember, of course, but the older ones should. These original Exodus survivors could represent as much as half of the current adult (over 20) population. (That is, the adult population now consists of these 40-60-year-olds and the younger 20-40-year-olds born after the Exodus, each group representing a 20-year age range.) And that would mean as many as about 300,000 men, plus a similar number of women. (Num. 26:51)