Deuteronomy 30:11-20 English Standard Version The Choice of Life and Death 11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. 15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” I find it interesting that the LORD says the command He is giving them is not too hard for them to obey. I agree that it is a simple command that is not hard to understand. It is not a mystery that only God Himself can understand or something that requires secret knowledge or a decoder ring that is hidden somewhere and requires much exploration and study to find that hidden knowledge or learn how to crack the code. God's people were to choose life not death, good not evil, and obedience not rebellion. They are to love the LORD their God first and foremost and they are to express this love by obediently walking in all of the ways in which He has commanded them. No longer are they to try to simply learn His character and infer how He wants them to live because of that character--that's what we see much of in the time of the patriarchs. There are some explicit commands there, but for the most part the LORD's people figured out that they were not to murder because the LORD was the giver of all life and the only one that was justified in taking a life (with the exceptions of war and capital punishment, which we see given in the Law). They are to be truthful and not tell a lie because He is truthful and honest in all His ways--it is His nature, and so on.
The LORD would bless them for their obedience with long life and prosperity, but if they turned to other gods and became like the Canaanites, the LORD says that they will surely die--this should sound much like the one rule that was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the LORD knew that it was possible for them to be obedient and never eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but He also knew that they would. In the same way here, I believe the LORD when He says that it is not too hard to obey this one one, but He knows us better than we know ourselves and knows that none of us would fully obey the Law because all of us have fallen in Adam and only the Second Adam could come and obey this command and all the others to take our place (see Romans 5). If the people that were called by His name turned to other gods and worshiped them, the LORD would remove blessings and prosperity, even removing them from their land by exile, and He would permit other pagan nations to come into the land to plunder it and to rule over it (temporarily) until His people repented and returned to Him. The LORD calls heaven and earth as witnesses against His people that He has warned them of what is to come when they disobey, and He knows they will disobey. The choice is theirs and while it seems like a no-brainer choice, we know that we all face this same choice every day and make the wrong choice over and over again as we choose self and pleasure and what we think will make us happy in the moment or what we think will bring us the most glory or we try to manipulate things to turn out the way we want them to be--which almost never ends well. This is a decision that is not just for each individual person but for their entire nation and for all their future generations. There is no such thing as "personal sin" that doesn't affect anyone else. Our choice to be disobedient brings judgment and condemnation on anyone who knows about our disobedience and turns a blind eye to it, or even someone who should know what is going on with us and actively chooses not to know (friends, neighbors, church members, coworkers, etc--the LORD does not give people a pass for turning a blind eye or willful ignorance. You are your brother's keeper according to the Law). Therefore this is an oath or vow that each swore individually, but that they also swore corporately as tribes and as a nation, and it was not just for them but they also swore it for their children and their children's children and so on who could not swear for themselves. This is partially why the sign of circumcision was commanded to occur on the eighth day. It was a covenant that the parents were making on how to raise their child and the children would look back at it and live their lives in conformity to that covenant that was made between the LORD and their parents and they would continue to circumcise their own sons in taking that covenant upon themselves so that the covenant was for each generation and the next generation as well. While the curse of sin which is the power of the Law that we fear is no longer in place because of the LORD took all the curses upon Himself, it is still the mechanism for us to identify ourselves as being the holy people of God and for us to show our love for Him, and in return the blessings of the Law are poured out on the people of God because of Christ (not because of our good works because anything good we do is because He is acting in and through us to accomplish those good works, for without Him we can do nothing that is pleasing or satisfying to the LORD). We should desire to obey not out of fear of curse, rejection, or punishment, but out of love and devotion and honor. Comments are closed.
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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