It's March 31, and we had a doozie of a chapter to read today! Did anyone else besides me find Deuteronomy 28 to be extremely intense?! Both in content and in length, this chapter is no joke!
The first 14 verses start off by telling us all about the blessings that will come for the Israelites if they carefully and faithfully obey God's commands. To paraphrase verses 3-6, God promised the Israelites that if they obeyed Him, His blessings would accompany essentially every area of their lives—from their children to their crops, from their livestock to their culinary undertakings. No matter where they went or what they did, they would be blessed! It goes on to describe how God would fight for them against their enemies (v. 7), grant them abundant prosperity (v.11), and bless all the works of their hands (v. 12)! All this and so much more could be theirs for the low, low price of total obedience to God.
It all sounds great... until verse 15! Suddenly the mood shifts, and we begin to read the description of all the curses that were to come upon the Israelites if they would NOT obey the commands of the Lord. In verses 16-19 we essentially see the exact opposite of the blessings described in verses 3-6. Their children, crops, livestock, food supply, EVERYTHING, would be cursed. The people would be plagued with diseases (v. 21), painful boils and tumors (v. 27). Properties, possessions, animals, and even their own children would be taken away from them (v. 30-33); their cities would be destroyed (v.52). The people would be driven to utter madness from the sights they would see, until their madness and poverty would lead them to the most appalling atrocity imaginable... eating their very own children. It's enough to make you sick.
The crazy thing is that even after this very graphic warning, many of these things DID end up happening to the Israelites following many long years of rebellion against God—we will read about that later on in the Old Testament. Somehow they failed to heed the warning and they suffered for it.
But as I reflect on the intensity of this chapter and try to figure out the significance of the two extremes depicted within these 68 verses, I can't help but think that, to some degree, it gives us a picture of heaven and hell—the blessing and the curse. For those who choose a life that is centered around bringing glory to God, a blessing beyond their wildest imaginings. And for those who choose a life that brashly stands against the reality of God's glory and His offer of forgiveness, a curse that would surpass their worst nightmare—worse than the torment Frodo underwent as he bore the ring into the fires of Mordor, more atrocious and merciless than the sufferings of Katniss and Peeta in the Hunger Games saga, and more hopelessly tragic than the moment Juliet woke up to find her heart-broken Romeo dead at her side.
So too—and worse yet—will be the depth of suffering for those who find themselves eternally separated from God. And how can we begin to grasp the glorious goodness of the blessing, if we cannot understand the vulgar and gruesome wickedness of the curse? We must take it seriously. The Israelites did not. They choose their destructive path despite the God-given warning. But we do the same all the time, don't we? It's hopeless! Or at least it would be... if it weren't for Jesus. Our hopelessness just displays all the more our desperate need for a Savior!
So you can see, even here in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, God is pointing us to Jesus. Because life without Him will inevitably and invariably lead us to the curse. But a life centered around Him, a life enraptured with Him, will "open the heavens, the storehouse of His bounty" (v.12) and guide us into a blessing beyond our wildest dreams!
Don't miss that. Embrace it. And grab hold of your blessing!
-Talasi Guerra
(Director of Children and Family Ministries)