Deuteronomy 28:1-14--Blessings for Obedience

Deuteronomy 28:1-14
English Standard Version

Blessings for Obedience
28 “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God. 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.

7 “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. 9 The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. 10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, 14 and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

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We're going to take a look at the blessings that come from obedience before we go back and once again take a look at the curses that come from disobedience (last time was the things that God would curse them for if they did them--they were all things that broke His Law--next time will be the actual consequences that will come as they break the Law, and it will map out the history of Israel).

Before we get started, none of us can obey the Law to experience the blessings that are listed here on our own.  The only one that accomplished this was Christ and yet He chose to take the curses of our disobedience on Himself so that we could experience the blessings that only He deserved.  The people that would be obedient to the Law would be blessed wherever they live and work--be it in the city or in the field (country).  They would be blessed with both children and a plentiful and good harvest of crops if they were obedient, and the LORD would also increase the size of their herds and give them good livestock.  The LORD would bless them to give them plenty of food to eat.  They would always have grain to make bread and they would have more than enough bread to feed themselves.  Wherever they went, they would be blessed because of their obedience.

The LORD also promised safety, security and military victory in the face of enemies that would rise up against them, for the battle belongs to the LORD.  Their enemies would flee before them in terror because the LORD would fight for them (as we will see happen many times when large armies come to attack Israel and the angel of the LORD, that is the pre-incarnate Christ, goes through the camp of the enemy and kills them or causes them to kill each other).

The LORD will bless them so much that their barns and storehouses will be full.  They will have enough for now and to take take care of them in the future (which is important because there will be entire years that the LORD tells them to not harvest and to let the land rest and for them to trust Him that He will give them enough harvest in the six years to be able to let the land rest in the 7th year and in the 50th years too).

One of the great blessings here is that the Israelites who were obedient to the Law would be known as the people of the LORD and that He would establish them as a people holy unto Himself as He had sworn He would do.  The LORD still does this today, and we are still called as His people to be obedient to His commandments, statutes, precepts and Law, not out of thinking it will earn us our salvation, but because we love Him and respect Him and know that His Law is good for us and is a good reflection of His nature, and we are being conformed to His image.  As we become more and more like Him, we will desire more and more to do the things of the Law that are pleasing to Him and desire less and less to do the things that are forbidden by the Law that are displeasing to Him.

When the peoples of the earth see this special relationship that Israel (and now Christians as well) have with the LORD, they will be terrified of them.  We see this happening all the time where there is a mixture of fear and hatred for those who belong to the LORD.  They will be afraid because we will be large in numbers of people and because we will be given material blessing and wealth (this is specifically a promise for the physical descendants of Abraham as Jesus did not promise us riches or large families on this side of eternity, but we await a future inheritance and blessing that will be even better in the New Heavens and the New Earth where we will be rewarded for everything that we gave up--yet some of that is fulfilled now through the Church).

The LORD promised the Israelites that they would be wealthy and that all the other nations of the world would come to them to borrow money from them, and that they would never need to borrow money from anyone.  This is still so true today that the LORD has greatly blessed the nation of Israel and the Jewish people in general with financial wealth and with a gift for finance--they are in charge of many of the large banks and credit unions and other financial institutions where people from around the world go to borrow money, yet the Jews who are obedient to the Law rarely are impoverished, and even when they do not have much in terms of money, they know they have enough because they have the LORD--they do not need to covet what anyone else has.

The people of Israel are promised that if they are obedient to the Law, they will be the "head" and not the "tail," that is that they will be the one deciding where everyone else is going to go and not be the one having to follow where some else has decided that they will go--yet it will be the LORD that is truly their head deciding where they are to go and they will be following His lead.

These blessings are only promised to those who are careful to obey all the commandments the LORD had given them and not turn away to them from the right or the left in any kind of partial obedience or trying to add anything to them or take anything away from them, but most importantly, the LORD did not want His people to turn aside to worship other gods--He would definitely remove all of their blessings if they did this, no matter how obedient they were to the other commandments for the first commandment is "You shall have no other gods before Me." (or beside Me), and the second is like it, "You shall not make for yourself an idol."  Worship of false gods and idolatry and all that was associated were forbidden by the LORD.