Read Deuteronomy
28 & Mark
15:27-47
To discover:
As you read consider the categories to the blessings and
curses.
To ponder:
This is a sobering chapter. The blessings and curses echo
those of Eden, looking to those of
eternity. The curses were eventually experienced when Assyria
and Babylon conquered Israel.
Here Moses says this would be a “sign and wonder” to God’s people forever
(28v47) – proof that God will always bring to pass the judgements he warns of. So
chapter 28 is for us to heed. For this reason, as with Jesus’ teaching, it
gives more space to the curses. We must remember this reflects God’s loving
concern for us.
The word
“if” sets the choice before Israel.
“If” she “fully” and “carefully” obeys, never “turning aside” from God’s
commands, she will be exalted “high above” all nations. This principle
continues. Those who are “last” in God’s kingdom will be “first,” as Jesus was,
because they act righteously by humbly serving God and others. This is the way
to greatness before God.
The
blessings will fill the whole land, encompass every activity, and be seen in
fruitfulness with respect to children, crops and livestock. God will therefore
open the heavens to bring rain. And enemies will be soundly defeated, so that
“all peoples” fear Israel.
It’s a picture of prosperity and security, which will be ours too, when all
evil is shut out of the new creation.
The curses
are not simply the absence of blessing, but an active bringing upon Israel
their opposite. They too will be total, affecting the same areas. So the people
will be frustrated in all they seek to achieve until they are eventually
destroyed. This destruction will include illness, diseased crops, drought,
defeat, afflictions of the skin patterned on the plagues of Egypt,
and helplessness of the mind, meaning people will just not know what to do
(28v29).
In the
context of war, people will lose their wives, homes, crops and animals. They, their
children and even king will be shipped to other nations, where they will commit
idolatry, whilst foreigners enjoy their land. Their crops will be ruined by
locusts, worms, and disease, and “in hunger” and “poverty” they will serve
their oppressors. Indeed, aliens will be exalted whilst Israelites sink lower.
As Jesus said, those who exalt themselves in their pride and arrogance, will be
humbled.
It is
stressed this is for the LORD to “put an iron yoke” of bondage on Israel’s
neck. He will bring a nation against her like a swooping eagle, which will show
no pity, devouring all they have and besieging all their cities. Cannibalism
will result from the lack of food, in which all compassion for one’s family
will be put aside by the desperation to survive. Moreover, “every kind” of
sickness and disaster will be brought on Israel
until the once numerous nation will be “few in number.” Scattered to the
nations, the people will experience psychological and emotional despair as they
worry about what they might face and long for what was, desperate that the
sufferings of the moment pass. Hard as it is, Jesus’ affirms this same despair
in describing the torments of hell (Lk 13v28-30, 16v22-24, Rev 14v10-11).
The chapter ends with Israel
once more enslaved in Egypt.
In other words, all that God has given will be removed, and they will
experience the very judgements Egypt
did (28v27).
This should all deepen our
appreciation of what it involved for Christ to “redeem us from the curse of the
law by becoming a curse for us.” And through true faith in him, none of this
needs to be feared. On the contrary, he bore the curse “that the blessing given
to Abraham might come to the Gentiles” (Gal 3v13-14)!
Praying it home:
Thank God for his love displayed in Christ experiencing the
equivalent of these things so that we could be saved from them. Pray for a
greater conviction and honesty about the reality of judgement in churches and
Christians.
Thinking further:
None today.
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