Originally I thought we'd go through the remainder of Chapter 28 in two days but there's so much material in this chapter I didn't want to feel like we were rushing through it. We will look at Part Three today and conclude with Part Four tomorrow.
The Lord is warning the congregation of Israel what will happen if they forsake Him and turn from His commands. As we noted yesterday, He spends far more time talking about the curses for disobedience than He spends talking about the blessings for obedience. I believe this is because He wants to impress upon them the seriousness of violating His commands and turning to false gods. Just as Jesus talked more about hell (because He didn't want anyone to go there) than about heaven, God the Father goes into great detail about the consequences of disobedience because He doesn't want anyone to experience these consequences.
For their obedience the Lord promised success in all the work of their hands but being disobedient will have the opposite effect. "You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land." (Deuteronomy 28:38-42) This is a picture of futility. Just as a life lived apart from the Lord produces nothing of spiritual value, it will also produce nothing of material value in ancient Israel.
We've discussed before how some of these principles are specific to ancient Israel alone. We cannot honestly say in modern times that people who have rejected the Lord never experience material success. Some of the wealthiest people in the world today obtained their wealth through dishonest dealings and sinful enterprises. Spiritually, however, they are completely destitute and the work of their hands is futile because it has no eternal value. They are like those about whom the Lord says in Revelation 3:17: "You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked."
The Lord told the ancient Israelites that they would not experience material success in this world if they turned away from Him, and this is because their material prosperity for obeying Him was intended to be a testimony to the heathen world that He is God, that He is the only God, and that He provides for and protects those who honor Him. If the ancient Israelites fell away from Him and fell into idolatry, He could not continue to bless them materially. For one thing, this would be rewarding disobedience, which is something a good father cannot do. For another thing, it would dishonor His holy reputation; other nations would conclude He did not care about sin and did not judge sin. Other nations would also conclude that He is not the only God if He kept blessing people who were engaging in worship of other gods. This would only bolster the belief of pagan people that their gods were real too.
Earlier in our chapter the Lord promised the people if they'd remain faithful to Him they would lend to other tribes and nations but would never need to borrow from anyone. He promised them they'd be the head and never the tail. The opposite will happen if they are unfaithful to Him. "The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail." (Deuteronomy 28:43-44)
"All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees He gave you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you." (Deuteronomy 28:45-48) It should be easy to love and serve the Lord in a land of plenty. It should be easy to sing His praises in a time of prosperity. If a person cannot find it in his heart to be grateful in good times, the Lord will allow hard times to fall because it's sometimes during the worst circumstances that the hardest hearts begin to soften toward Him. But if a person cannot be persuaded to turn to the Lord out of thankfulness in the good times or out of a need for help in the bad times, what more can the Lord do? What more remains to be tried? The one whose heart is this hard has destruction (judgment) coming his way.
A hard heart is a terrible thing. Each time a person hardens his heart against the pleading of the Lord to repent and turn to Him, it's like the shell around his heart grows another layer. Eventually nothing gets through. He stops feeling any guilt for his sins. He stops feeling any shame for his actions. The Apostle Paul referred to people who've hardened their hearts against the Lord and turned to worldly things (or to idolatrous things) as people whose consciences have been "seared as with a hot iron". (1 Timothy 4:2b) What happens when we sear a piece of cloth with a hot iron? It gets holes in it. Nothing will get caught in a conscience full of holes; any guilt or shame a person would normally feel will just fall through the holes instead. To prevent ourselves from becoming hard hearted or developing holes in our consciences, we must remain close to the Lord by daily communing with Him and studying His holy word. We cannot know Him or know His godly principles if we never spend any time with Him and never read the Scriptures. And if we spend time with Him and spend time reading His word, it will be difficult to develop hard hearts or consciences that never bother us when we make mistakes.
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