Week 17: Deuteronomy 27 – 34 and Psalms 113 – 119
As we have come to the end of the Pentateuch, read Moses’ final remarks and wrapped the week up with Psalm 119, my heart is swollen with emotion. My mind is striving to take it all in. It is all so rich, so multifaceted. Charles Spurgeon related the Word of God to a kaleidoscope. At first glance, we see one beautiful image. Then, with the slightest adjustment of new perspective, we see a whole new display of majesty. That has been my experience with the Word in this week’s readings.
Deuteronomy 28 has wrecked me…but in the kind of way that I need to be wrecked! This chapter is where Moses walked the people of Israel through the blessings and curses for their obedience or disobedience. By God’s grace, the message of this chapter has fallen on fresh ears for me. I felt like I was standing there with the Israelites on the plains of Moab as I read and re-read it. Perhaps I was more tuned in because I knew the closing chapters of Deuteronomy are the last that we have with Moses. He has been such a significant part of our sojourn through the Bible so far. Or perhaps God simply caused me to pay extra close attention for some personal application that He had in mind for me. Either way, chapter 28 of Deuteronomy stopped me in my tracks on our journey and has become a landmark place for me.
In reading through the blessings and curses, I imagined myself in the Israelites sandals, Moses speaking directly to me. He began and ended the section on blessings with a similar statement:
“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments…and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them…all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.” Deuteronomy 28:1,14
As soon as my eyes fell on those words, I realized that I have completely disqualified myself for the blessings. Faithfully obey? Do all of His commandments? Not turn aside or go after other gods to serve them?! Just as the Israelites could not check any of those off as complete, neither can I. I have utterly failed in each one of those departments.
That could only mean one thing. There were only two options given. Blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. As I have identified with every act of disobedience performed by Israel throughout their 40 years in the wilderness, the truth became obvious to me. I have 100% qualified myself for the curses of disobedience. I hit me like a ton of bricks…According to Deuteronomy 28, I am cursed by God.
This in one of those things that I “knew” to be true intellectually. But, the weight of it has landed on me afresh as we have seen this reality from its beginnings on the pages of Genesis. As we have seen God’s covenantal relationship with His people developed, the implications of my disobedience have become so much more personal. His faithfulness has been magnified, and my lack there-of, the same.
Reading further into chapter 28 of Deuteronomy, what I have actually qualified myself for was described by Moses:
“All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God…they shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart…therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything.” (Deuteronomy 28:45-48)
That is only a snippet of the dissertation on the plight of the disobedient! Hunger and thirst, nakedness, lacking everything…this description of the consequences for my disobedience to the LORD struck me. Is this not the very type of person/people that Jesus addressed in His sermon on the mount in Matthew 5?
“Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are those mourn…Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…” (Matthew 5:3-6)
Deuteronomy describes those that hunger and thirst, are naked and lacking everything as cursed. Jesus describes this same type of person/people as blessed. What in the world?!
Jesus said in Luke 5:31,
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
Also, in His inaugural address in His hometown of Nazareth, he quoted from Isaiah 61, referring to Himself, saying,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19
Over and over Jesus made it crystal clear that He did not come for those living the obedient, blessed life. He came to rescue those who were/are sick, blind, held captive, oppressed by enemies, and enslaved by idolatry. He came for the ones who got what they had coming to them according to Deuteronomy 28. He came to rescue the cursed!
Jesus called those who recognized their absolute need for a savior, a healer, and a deliverer…BLESSED! Those are the ones who, like me, have disqualified themselves for the blessings and are facing the full list of curses in Deuteronomy 28. We are the ones who stand guilty as charged according to the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, which served as a witness against the people. But we are also the ones who are blessed because our Redeemer has come! He has come to save us! He took the curses…ALL OF THEM, so we could be blessed. It is the Father’s desire to bless us. Our disobedience and unfaithfulness have left us far off from the blessings. But our good and gracious Father was not willing to leave it that way. Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf was sufficient for the cost of all of us, to the very depths of our dishonor of our Maker. And now, we are blessed.
This is almost too much for me to handle at this moment. It makes no logical sense that such kindness would be bestowed on me. Because of Jesus, I who was cursed have become blessed. He offers this to all mankind, if we will only believe.
“but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” John 20:31