Deuteronomy

The book of Deuteronomy.

28. Blessings for Obedience and Curses for Disobedience

How do Christians follow God’s law?

We need to be wary of the dangers of prosperity gospel preaching. It says that if you follow God, if you tithe, if you do this and that, then you will get a nice life. This can encourage people to become obsessed with worldly wealth, or to expect that they will automatically become rich just by participating in their church. That is not how the world works. God has bigger plans than giving us all McMansions and the latest luxury vehicles. At the same time, God does really bless his people, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

God blesses those who obey him.

Deuteronomy 28:1 "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.

In God’s plan, obedience leads to authority. And he declares many other blessings for obedience:

9 The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. 10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you.

Likewise, because we bear the name of Christ, we need to act very righteously towards others as representatives for God.

11 And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, 14 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.

The chief condition for obedience is whether or not God’s people go serve other gods.

The list of curses for those who disobey is about four times as long as the list of blessings for those who obey. You should read through all of them some time when you’re weighing your sins. Essentially, it comes down to this:

20 "The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.

45 All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you.

God is owed the highest reverence. Him only must we serve. And not with grumbles, but “with joyfulness and gladness of heart.” (28:47)

49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand,

50 a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.

Among many other punishments and curses, one of the chief punishments is that the liberty and abundance God’s people got to enjoy is taken away because of their sin. Sin kills a nation, and other empires start swooping in like carrion birds to try and pick at the decaying carcass. This is one more reason that we need to fervently pray for revival in our own country.

62 Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God.

63 And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

God’s original plan for people was for them to be fruitful and multiply. But when a certain group of them are deep in sin, eventually they have to be brought down and humbled — if only for the good of the rest of humanity.

64 "And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.

This is what ended up happening to the people of Israel because they went after gods besides the living God who they swore to serve.

The United States of America isn’t based on this covenant in the same way that the people of Israel were. But America is full of many Christians, and Christians are the heirs to these covenant promises. So it is still worthwhile to think seriously about the comparison.

Thinking analogously about our nation today, more people seem to be proudly rejecting God than ever before. While there has always been sin and idolatry, never before has sin and idolatry been paraded around so much as key to the values of a new era. It’s tragic, but those of us who are seeking to obey God should tighten our belts. The blessings of faithfulness can’t last for the unfaithful, and when God judges a nation it isn’t fun for anyone.

Of course, for the Israelites, they had to conquer the land before they could lose it. God did not just give them what was promised on a silver platter. They had to fight for it, city by city, king by king. Sometimes God gives us gifts but he wants us to fight for them.

God did not send the Israelites to take their land as a chaotic swarm. He gave them a general to lead them in the conquest—a man named Joshua.