May 16, 2021
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Reading along with us in Deuteronomy? Here’s today’s reading:
Deuteronomy 29 (NIV)
Renewal of the Covenant
1 These are the terms of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
This chapter reminded me that no matter what signs and wonders we see it doesn’t matter without the Holy Spirit changing our hearts. Israelites saw so many miraculous things and still disobeyed, still strayed away as soon as they didn’t think God was doing things in their timing.
Beyond knowing and even seeing miracles at the hand of God we need our heart changed to really see what God has done for us!
Deuteronomy 29
Deuteronomy 29
Deuteronomy 29 –
Covenants in those times were often structured like this between a king/noble and his people: here is what I promise to do, and this is what you promise to do and the consequences that would come if they didn’t follow. God seeks to enter covenant with this new generation entering the promised land. He starts by describing all the miraculous things he did to provide for and protect His people. How could you not be impressed with what He did, particularly clothes and shoes not wearing out after 40 years of wandering in the desert. And as a result, they are encouraged to obey what God has commanded and follow Him as His people. We and they should be amazed that God is even willing to enter covenant with them, condescending Himself to terms He places on Himself even as He places terms on them!
They are told not to be drawn away by the evil of the nations around them as well as not think in pride that the blessings will flow even as they go their own way. Persisting in disobedience and using God’s provisions as a reason is what is most upsetting to God as well as forsaking Him for other gods. And if they do that as a people, future generations and other nations will see the desolation that will come and they will find out it is because they forsook their God in spite of His faithfulness and goodness to them.
How grateful we can be for the covenant that is established in Jesus’ sacrifice and the Spirit that comes as a benefit to help us live as the people of God.
God desires to make a covenant with the Israelites. He has provided for them for 40 years….clothing and shoes that don’t wear out and food provided daily! They must obey His commands and all will go well with them. “Therefore keep the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.” Socialism works with the Sovereign of the universe.
A man-made socialist institution does not work, because men are inherently selfish, especially the leaders. I found these verses funny and telling: “so that there may not be among you man or woman or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations, and that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood; 19 and so it may not happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall have peace, even though I follow the dictates of my heart’—as though the drunkard could be included with the sober.” How many live in cognitive dissonance.
25And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. 26They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. 27Therefore the Lord’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. 28In furious anger and in great wrath the Lord uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”