We are still in the portion of Deuteronomy called the Song of Moses. Our passage today is very sad for it speaks of the consequences to come after the Lord's people turn to idolatry. In yesterday's passage the Lord said that because He had been rejected He would hide His face (withdraw the closeness of His presence) and in a lot of cases this can be enough to turn a person back to Him. A person begins to miss their close connection with the Lord and starts to think about how far they've fallen. But when this approach doesn't work, the Lord has to resort to more unpleasant methods to get a person to see the error of his ways. I confess there have been times when He's had to let my situation become quite desperate in order to get me to stop going in the wrong direction and turn around. He is capable of using these methods for individuals or for nations who have drifted away from Him.
"For a fire will be kindled by My wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains." (Deuteronomy 32:22) Many times already the Lord promised abundant harvests if the people remain faithful to Him. If they do not remain faithful to Him, He said the crops would be cursed. He said there would be scorching heat and drought, blight and mildew. What didn't burn up in the drought would be eaten by locusts and worms.
Not only would famine be the result of waywardness, but so would illnesses and invasion by enemies. The Lord went into much greater detail about these calamities in Deuteronomy 28 but gives a brief summary of them again here in Chapter 32. "I will heap calamities on them and spend My arrows against them. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. The young men and young women will perish, the infants and those with gray hair." (Deuteronomy 32:23-25)
Famine, disease, and the enemy sword don't discriminate: they strike people of all ages. This is why we find mention of young men and women, infants, and those with gray hair being affected by the same troubles. Although the Lord says "I will send" these calamities, I feel like it would be accurate to say that what He's doing is taking His protective hand off the nation in the day when many of the citizens have forsaken Him. That's all He would have to do to cause these things to take place. When the time comes that they have withdrawn from Him and do not wish to have Him in their lives, like the gentleman He is He will withdraw His presence and hand of protection. This will allow the enemy nations surrounding them, who were greater in number and in military experience, to swoop in and take advantage of the situation. In withdrawing His presence He withdraws the extra abundance of blessing He promised for obedience: the blessings of the rains always being on time, the blessings of keeping destroying insects away, the blessings of great fertility in humans and in livestock, and the blessings of holding back the diseases that plagued the heathen tribes. If the Israelites begin adopting idolatrous practices, a number of diseases will befall them that they've never dealt with before, for the heathen tribes ate unclean foods forbidden to the Israelites and they drank blood in their idolatrous ceremonies. The Lord doesn't have to point His finger and literally strike someone with these plagues; the plagues will be the natural consequence of ingesting things He told them never to ingest.
Several times since the Exodus we've found the Lord upset enough with the people's rebellious attitude that He's threatened to make an end of them. You'll recall Moses interceding on their behalf, saying that not only was the fate of the nation at stake but that the Lord's reputation was also at stake. If the Lord destroyed the nation, the other nations would mock His name and claim that He was not powerful enough to keep the promises He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The heathens would continue their false belief that their gods were real and that their gods were stronger than the God of Israel. The Lord is not a promise breaker. The Lord must be true to who He is at all times, and who He is is someone of integrity, someone who is holy, someone who is powerful, someone who is faithful, someone who must show Himself to be Lord---the only God---to all the nations on earth so that all human beings will have the opportunity to know and serve their Creator. So we find Him saying next that although He had the right to destroy His chosen people for "unchoosing" Him, He would not do so because the heathens would misinterpret what He was doing. "I said I would scatter them and erase them from human memory, but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest the adversary misunderstand and say, 'Our hand has triumphed; the Lord has not done all of this.'" (Deuteronomy 32:26-27)
The Lord would be within His rights to be done with the entire human race. We have all sinned against Him. We have committed some sins in ignorance when we weren't familiar with His laws and commandments. We've committed some sins knowing full well we were disobeying Him. We've put other things and other people ahead of Him sometimes. We've put ourselves ahead of Him and have done what seemed right to us without consulting Him about the path we should take. He could wipe us all off the face of the earth and conclude that this human "experiment" (for lack of a better word) has been unsatisfactory. But He hasn't and He won't because, as the prophet Jeremiah stated, He loves us and has compassion on us. We don't deserve this love and compassion but the Lord must be who He is: a loving and compassionate God. So we are still here on this earth today because of who He is, not because we are worthy. "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22-23)
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