Deuteronomy 28

Deuteronomy 28:1-68

Deuteronomy 27:1-26; Deuteronomy 28:1-68(e) The Results of Obedience or Disobedience to these Laws (Deuteronomy 27:1-26; Deuteronomy 28:1-68) The people were commanded, when they should come into possession of the Promised Land, to erect two pillars (probably suggesting the permanency and authority of the Law) and an altar, for sacrifice and propitiation in case of failure to keep God’ s law (Deuteronomy 27:1-8). The blessings and cursings following obedience or disobedience are minutely portrayed. It is to be noted that of the twelve curses, eleven are against some particular sin, while the twelfth is hurled against all breaches of law and against those who refuse to keep the law as a rule of conduct. Most of the sins denounced are secret sins. The blessings pronounced are to characterize every sphere of physical, moral, and spiritual life. “ It may be well to classify the curses here recorded. They cover twelve sins, four of which belong to one class-sins against chastity-so that they may be arranged as follows: eight specific prohibitions: against idolatry or image worship, dishonoring parents, removing landmarks, making the blind to wander, perverting the judgment of the fatherless and friendless, violating sexual purity, secretly assaulting a neighbor, accepting hire to slay the innocent; with a final comprehensive curse against any form of disobedience or nonconformity to God’ s law” -A.T. Pierson. Provision is made for repentance and restoration to favor and to the land. How truly these chapters have been fulfilled in the history of the Jews. It has been well remarked that history furnishes no parallel to the awful and prolonged retribution visited upon this nation once favored as no other, now chastised as no other. Nothing at the time could have been more unlikely than such a national destiny; yet in every respect the Lord hath done what He said, and the Jew is today the standing miracle and the history of miracle. The supreme lesson in these chapters of blessing and cursing is this: “ that, back of all that we call or count accidental, incidental, due to natural causes or human conflicts, to commerce or war, to national aggression or submission, there is a Divine Hand. In this fearful catalogue of calamities Jehovah appears as a chastiser and avenger. He controls the visitations of disease in the human body and mind; in the realm of animal life and in vegetation; the invasions and reverses of war, the oppression and enslavement of subject races: all that men attribute to the atmosphere, the soil, the schemes of the ambitious and the materiel of war, the Word of God ascribes primarily to the permission and commission of a presiding Deity, whose will winds and waves, clouds and tempests, heat and frost, fire and flood, microbes and bacilli, men and demons, alike obey! We must stop banishing the Creator from His creation, the providence of God from the incidents of history, the control of God from the whole course of things, and in this materialistic age restore Jehovah to His throne as the universal Governor over individuals, families, and nations. “ We must learn that one of the principles of His administration is to bless virtue according to its measure, even when it may exist side by side with vice, and to curse vice according to its measure, even when it exists side by side with virtue. We have a singular example in our own land. There is no question of the vice of polygamy and its accompanying sensuality and family degradation; yet the Mormons have been singularly prosperous as a people, in temporal things, because they have been a community of total abstainers, and have been industrious and sagacious in redeeming an alkali desert from sterility by irrigation and cultivation. The Lord does not bless their domestic life, for He cannot while it violates His ideals, nor can He bless their religious life, founded upon what is both error and fraud; but He can and does bless their industry, frugality, temperance, and mutual cooperation. Health, wealth, well-being, are not accidents, nor due to a blind inexorable fate. They have their fixed laws and conditions; and they who obey, other things being equal, will reap what they sow, for God is not mocked by the caprice of man or the chance of history” -A.T. Pierson. The blessings of Deu 28:1-68 include almost every sphere of human experience and activity. Israel was an earthly people with an earthly covenant and earthly promises. It was natural, therefore, that the blessings accruing from obedience would be such as are here set forth-such blessings as pertain to earthly things. It is different with believers in the New Testament dispensation. They are a spiritual people with a spiritual covenant and spiritual promises. Temporal prosperity does not always follow piety and godliness in this present dispensation. Nor does godliness always receive its reward so far as temporal things are concerned during our lifetime. “ Hope is sown for the righteous.” The full reward of the believer lies in the future. These chapters of blessing and cursing have something to say to us with regard to the motives and emotions to which God appeals. Both fear and love are appealed to as a basis for obedience. We are also taught that a man’ s destiny is in his own hands; he can choose blessing or cursing, death or life. The blessings and cursings of these chapters may be individual as well as national and corporate (cf. Deuteronomy 29:18-20). What a great thought that a single individual is noticed in his sin or his goodness!