September 8, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The message of Deuteronomy is one that the church desperately needs to hear today. These final words of Moses given to the children of Israel as they prepared to enter into the Promised Land serve as a warning, an encouragement, and a charge. Through them, God exposes the idolatry of our hearts and calls us to give all of our love, worship, and devotion to Him alone in every area of our lives! Moses warns the people that when they enter the land there will be things that compete with God for their attention, their affections and their worship. We, too, have hundreds of things that compete for our hearts each and every day. In this book, God teaches us how to properly respond to the amazing grace He has given us by giving Him our undivided allegiance, our whole hearts and our whole lives. Over the next 34 days, let\u2019s seek this ancient way together as a church!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This chapter is all about blessing and curses from the Lord\u2019s hand based upon the obedience or disobedience of the people of Israel to the covenant law. Moses lays before the people the consequences they will face for their actions, whether they obey or disobey. In the section on blessing the Lord promises that He will make the people altogether prosperous and blessed in the land if they obey: their agricultural produce will be blessed, their military will be blessed, their families will be blessed, and they will enjoy abundance in every possible way!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The section on curses almost five times as long as the section on blessing, which in and of itself shows how gravely serious the people needed to receive this warning. The curses Moses describes as a direct result of the people\u2019s unfaithfulness are horrific, graphic, and comprehensive. The end result is clear: if the people rejected the Lord by disobeying and pursuing other gods, He would turn all the blessings He had poured out on them into curses, destroying them in the same way that He had used them to destroy the nations they were to dispossess in the land. At this point, they would have been no different from those wicked nations that they were to destroy, and so the Lord would also destroy them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a warning that the church needs to hear today. While those of us who are in Christ will never face eternal consequences for our sin, God is making it clear both here and at every point in Scripture that the only way to true, abundant, fullness of life is through Him. God\u2019s commands are never arbitrary or vindictive; through them God is calling us to the way of life rather than the way of death and destruction! He desires for us to enjoy the fullness of the abundant life that Christ came and died and rose again to give us (John 10:10), and that enjoyment only comes by walking in His ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we walk in obedience to the commands of God, we live out the purpose that He has given to us as His people: \u201cAnd all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD\u201d (Deuteronomy 28:10). Obedience is the pathway to life; disobedience and sin\u00a0always<\/strong> lead to death of some kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n