In our last study we took a look at the blessings the Lord promised the Israelites if they will be obedient to Him in the promised land. Today and tomorrow we study the remainder of Chapter 28 which has to do with the consequences of disobeying the Lord.
"However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all His commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country." (Deuteronomy 28:15-16) In the first half of our chapter the Lord promised blessings for obedience in the city and in the country; in other words, they would be blessed wherever they lived and wherever they went. If any of them choose to live in disobedience to Him, they will face troubles and dissatisfaction wherever they are.
In the first half of our chapter, in return for their obedience the people were promised all the blessings of home and hearth along with blessings in their agricultural and business pursuits. Things will go wrong in all these areas of their lives if they live in opposition to the word of God. "Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out." (Deuteronomy 28:17-19)
Nothing is going to go well in any area of their lives if they turn away from the Lord their God. In some ways the very specific list of blessings and curses in Deuteronomy 28 are spoken to Israel alone. Israel alone was given the promised land. The Israelites knew the Lord in a way no other nation on earth knew Him at that time. It was only to Israel that the Lord made the first covenant, although people of other cultures could convert to Judaism and in doing so they were bound to obey the covenant. But the Lord had a special relationship with Israel and this is why it was such a severe offense if any of them chose to disobey His laws and commandments. This is why it was such an abomination to dabble in idolatry or forsake the Lord in favor of the gods of the other nations.
The Lord has not promised believers in the church age that if we remain faithful to Him we will prosper in every area of our lives. Being in a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ doesn't guarantee us easy living; on the contrary, Jesus warned anyone who wants to follow Him that the world (the use of "the world" here is a reference to those who don't love or serve the Lord) will hate us because it hated Him. (John 15:18-15) If anyone despises Jesus they will naturally despise His disciples as well. They will discriminate against us in various ways and make life hard for us. In addition to troubles our fellow man may cause us, we have to live in a fallen world that has been polluted by sin---a world where bad things happen to both the godly and the wicked. Life isn't going to be a bed of roses all the time, not even for those who love the Lord. And we must keep in mind that even to Israel the Lord wasn't promising the complete absence of sorrow in life. Things like accidents, illnesses, and death were still going to happen because those are the things that happen in a world polluted by sin. As the Bible says, it is appointed unto every man to die because every person on the face of the earth has sinned. (Hebrews 9:27) So the Lord wasn't promising the Israelites they'd never have any troubles or trials in this life or that they would live forever in their mortal human bodies. He was promising them prosperity and protection such as no other nation on earth had, and one of the purposes of this was to draw the eyes of the world to Israel so people of other cultures would know that the Lord is real and that He is the only God and that He protects and provides for those who serve Him. The enormous blessings promised to Israel in the land of Canaan were not only rewards for godly living but were also intended to draw people from other nations to faith in the Lord.
As the wise King Solomon observed, the way of transgressors is hard. (Proverbs 13:15) Living in disobedience to the Lord brings nothing of lasting value into our lives. It brings a lot of extra hardship into our lives too. The Lord created human beings to have a relationship with Him. He created us with a space inside of us that can be filled only by Him. Seeking satisfaction and peace in life apart from Him is always going to leave us unfulfilled. Depending on where we seek a sense of peace and satisfaction, we'll bring not only spiritual harm to ourselves but physical harm as well. We'll see next that if the Israelites turn away from the Lord they will experience downturns in both their material prosperity and in their physical prosperity. "The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking Him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until He has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed." (Deuteronomy 28:20-24)
These things sound very harsh but something we must take a moment to consider is that troubling circumstances often lead to repentance. Many a person has come to the realization that his life has become miserable due to his rebellion against the Lord. Many a person has acknowledged that he's brought all his troubles upon himself by living in sin. Many a person has tossed and turned through the dark watches of the night, seeking peace in his mind but finding none, wrestling with the knowledge that the destination of his eternal soul is in question. The curses of disobedience are harsh but sometimes hitting rock bottom is the only thing that compels a person to look up to the Lord and bow on their knees before Him and make Him the Lord of their lives.
King Solomon said that when a man's ways please the Lord, the Lord will make even his enemies be at peace with him. (Proverbs 16:7) The opposite is also true. When a man's ways don't please the Lord, the Lord may allow his enemies to get the upper hand over him. "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but will flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of the mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you." (Deuteronomy 28:25-29)
The verses above remind me of our study of Revelation in which we find similar plagues falling upon the unbelievers of the earth in the last days. In Revelation the plagues fall as a result of people's sins but another purpose of the plagues is to bring people to repentance. Even in wrath the Lord is merciful! Even when handing down judgment His ears are open to prayers of repentance. Hardships can become blessings when we allow them to turn us away from sin and turn us toward the Lord. Before I came to faith in the Lord I had painted myself into a corner with my sins and bad decisions. My life was a mess of my own making. It wasn't until I was completely hemmed in with nowhere to turn that I looked up to the Lord and called out to Him. That's true of a lot of people. Not all of us respond appropriately to the Lord calling to us in love. Not all of us respond appropriately to being blessed. For some of us, it takes facing the consequences of our poor choices to compel us to repent and get in a right relationship with the Lord. So we see that, even if the Israelites bring some of the curses of Chapter 28 upon themselves, there is still hope. Their hard times may cause them to recognize the error of their ways, repent, and turn back to the Lord.
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