“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. – Deuteronomy 30:17-18a NLT
God’s love for us is unconditional; yet God’s blessing is conditional – dependent on our obedience to His command.
God speaks: in Person, through Christ, through scripture, through the Spirit — God shows us his will. We are free to choose. What will it be?
God makes a covenant, God confirms a promise, God confers a blessing and what does it imply?
Will the LORD not surely do what He has said?
Yet we have a part to do. We have an action in the agreement. We have a choice.
We sometimes pray for blessing, while we often live for curse. For we act knowingly against the will of God and the promise of our own mouth. We stand before heaven and earth making our vow, giving our word and pledging our allegiance before the Living and loving God and human witnesses. Then we sin and would hide from heaven and earth and witnesses the sins of our disobedience.
We may even say (on Sunday occasion): Jesus is Lord.
Yet is Jesus YOUR Lord?
When will we repent and return to the Lord our God? It would seem by some of our witness on many occasions that we are no different than our Chosen forefathers.
Deuteronomy 30
English Standard Version (ESV)
Repentance and Forgiveness
30 “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, 2 and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you…
11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off…
14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
If you obey… by loving the Lord your God…, then… the Lord your God will bless you…
17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.
You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.
Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
God charges Moses, as the Lord has charged His leaders – His Kings and His Priests, His Prophets and His angels:
This is the will and word of the LORD.
Will you not do it? For IF you do, I will bless you.
BUT IF you refuse to obey, I must curse and not bless the one I would love.
Moses once more sets before us the blessing and curse:
Follow the LORD or perish without blessing.
We know how soon God’s own chosen ones did turn against the Lord even after many reminders of blessing and cautions of consequence.
Years later…
1 Samuel 1:3 Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord…
1 Samuel 2:12 Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord.
27 And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him,
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh?
The Lord speaks here of Levi as Eli’s ancestral father of the house of the priests of the Lord.
28 Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel…
30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed…
31 Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house… 34 And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day… ”
Then Samuel faithfully spoke the word of the Lord to Israel as had Moses generations before.
Hear his witness as Priest anointed in place of his Eli’s two evil sons. Samuel would anoint Israel’s Kings; Saul here and David later.
6 And Samuel said to the people, “The Lord is witness, who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt.
7 Now therefore stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that he performed for you and for your fathers. 8 When Jacob went into Egypt, and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place.
9 But they forgot the Lord their God… 11 And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety. 12 And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the Lord your God was your king.
13 And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the Lord has set a king over you. 14 If you will fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.
15 But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king.
Now both Priest and King are representatives of God’s chosen people before the LORD.
20 And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. 21 And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. 22 For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.
Two generations (& 3 Kings) later
1 Kings 9
The Lord Appears to Solomon
6 But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,
7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ 9 Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.’”
To be continued
