Thoughts for the Day

If you heed these commandments, by diligently observing them, the Lord your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors; he will love you, bless you, and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, in the land that he swore to your ancestors to give you. You shall be the most blessed of peoples.

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

Our passage from the Book of Deuteronomy recounts Moses’ sermon to the people as they are about to cross the Jordan into Canaan after 40 years in the desert. He has been warned by God that he will not see the Promised Land, and he wants to remind the people of the covenant (the binding two-way promise) they made with God and the need to honour it.

The most important word in this Chapter is “If”. Moses demands the people make a choice. Yahweh chose to show Himself to the world through Israel. He would do this by allowing the world to see that He was with his people by blessing them, or else that He had withdrawn from His people by cursing them. The choice was always theirs. We need to see this as if it were a legal treaty between a king and his subjects where the final passages would contain a blessing upon those who observed their part of the agreement, and curses upon those who defaulted.

As we know the covenant was to break down for the people could not keep their side of the agreement, and Moses gives a picture of the consequences that await the Israelites, both positive and later negative. It is a stark reminder of the importance of faithfulness to God’s laws, and the impact that obedience or disobedience can have on God’s people. When God decided to restore us to Himself, through Jesus, we became inheritors of the new covenant, simplified as “Love God, and others as yourself!” But the choice to obey, the “if” word is still there – it is up to us to be faithful to God or not!

Lord God,
we long to be faithful to You,
but somehow our wilful,
self-centred, desires get in the way.
Help us, through Your Holy Spirit,
to be worthy of Your blessings,
and honour our promises,
by making the right choices today,
and in the future.
Amen.