(Note – This passage and devotional needs to be read in concert with that of yesterday to have a full understanding.)

At a football game, there is the meeting at the 50-yard line before the contest begins. Here the referees meet with representative captains of the two teams for a coin toss to determine who kicks off and who receives, along with which goal each will defend. The dozens of players on the teams look on with interest, as do the thousands of fans in attendance. Certain specific rules are reiterated, particularly on the occasion of an overtime.

That mental picture of a football game may help in understanding today’s reading. Here we continue with the event to be observed upon the nation of Israel’s occupation of the Promised Land – ratifying the covenant with the Lord God. Six of the tribes were to stand on one mountain named Gerizim, representing the blessings of God in the covenant. Six other tribes were to occupy the opposite hill called Mount Ebal, representing the curses to follow the breaking of the covenant. Between them stood the Levites, who pronounced the truths of the Law, followed by the “Amen” of the representative people.

The picture shows Gerizim on the left and Ebal on the right. Shechem is in the middle. As you may note from the photo, this is not a large area … but it was a sort of natural amphitheater.

Something we need to understand from this passage is that everything about it is representative. Surely several million people did not occupy these hills, and not all the blessings and curses are given – it is all representative. Consider especially the last verse which is a summary statement about the Law and the need to keep it. What is interesting is that the Apostle Paul quotes this verse in Galatians 3:10 to demonstrate the impossible nature of keeping the Law – “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’”  We need to understand that the Law was not really about grace, but was rather about showing a man his sin toward the end that he would seek grace in forgiveness through sacrificial atonement – to be ultimately found finally in the work of Christ.

Curses From Mount Ebal

9 Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, “Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the Lord your God. 10 Obey the Lord your God and follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.”

11 On the same day Moses commanded the people: 12 When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. 13 And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali.

14 The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice:

15 “Cursed is anyone who makes an idol—a thing detestable to the Lord, the work of skilled hands—and sets it up in secret.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

16 “Cursed is anyone who dishonors their father or mother.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

17 “Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

18 “Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

19 “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

20 “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his father’s wife, for he dishonors his father’s bed.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

21 “Cursed is anyone who has sexual relations with any animal.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

22 “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

23 “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his mother-in-law.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

24 “Cursed is anyone who kills their neighbor secretly.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

25 “Cursed is anyone who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

26 “Cursed is anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

The fulfillment of this: from Joshua chapter 8:

All the Israelites, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the LORD, facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Both the foreigners living among them and the native-born were there. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.

One of my favorite church cartoons is of a man talking to the pastor at the door of the church on Easter Sunday, telling him that he is stuck in a rut – preaching on the same subject every time the man comes! And then there is the story of the new pastor in a church who preached his first sermon, but the next week preached the exact same message all over. The people thought he just made a mistake and decided to give him a third week … and sure enough, same sermon. So the people confronted him and he responded, “Well, when you apply this first sermon, I’ll move on to something else!”

In our readings in Deuteronomy, we cannot help but hear the same ideas over and over … “obey these commands … so that your days may be long … carefully observe … into the land the Lord your God is leading you … love him with all your heart … teach this to your children …”  The reason it feels like it is being repeated so much is because … well … it IS being repeated over and over! There was no reason for the people to not clearly understand!

It is not like the Lord was sending the Israelites into a horrible place where they would have to gut it out and struggle desperately to survive in a brutal environment. The place was truly fabulous, as it is largely to this day. Yes, there are arid regions, but the land is rich and prosperous … especially compared to where they had been living – in Egypt.

As it says in the reading today, Egypt was a land where crops would grow if you worked hard, foot by foot, to bring water from the Nile to irrigate the ground. Otherwise, the place was pretty much a desert. In the Promised Land, Moses describes it beautifully as a place with mountains and valleys that drink rain from heaven. God gives his promise as well to faithfully send the rains to make it prosper in accord with the people’s obedience.

What a sweet deal!  The Israelites were truly at a fork in the road. The choices could not be more different, more right and left, more black and white, more life and death … it was all about blessing and cursings. (The final portion of the reading about the two mountains will be repeated and explained in a reading next week.)

We face the same fork in the road – the same choice of obedience/rebellion, trust/independence, sufficiency/greed, contentment/discontent. The natural man within tells us to take charge of our own fate by seeing expedient opportunities and easy paths of creature comforts and pleasures. It is totally stupid! But we do it … and is the reason we need to step back and REVIVE.

Deuteronomy 11:8-32

8 Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 9 and so that you may live long in the land the Lord swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. 11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. 12 It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. 17 Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you. 18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

22 If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him— 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. 24 Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you. The Lord your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.

26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— 27 the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; 28 the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. 29 When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses. 30 As you know, these mountains are across the Jordan, westward, toward the setting sun, near the great trees of Moreh, in the territory of those Canaanites living in the Arabah in the vicinity of Gilgal. 31 You are about to cross the Jordan to enter and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you. When you have taken it over and are living there, 32 be sure that you obey all the decrees and laws I am setting before you today.

“Tell me a story,” says our children and grandchildren – often at bedtime or another teachable moment of life. I believe that in some way this in a divinely-infused innate desire to connect with the wisdom of the past. Children need to hear the stories of the past – of their family, of the human family, of the story of stories of what God has been doing from the beginning of time. These stories need to be honest and truthful – about the good AND the bad. There are, of course, lessons in each. Unless children are told, they will not know, because they cannot remember.

That is the summary of today’s reading. Moses reminds the people for the umpteenth time to love and obey God, AND, to be sure to tell the children what this generation of adults saw with their own eyes about God’s dealings.

There are essentially two parts of stories Moses commands to be told: first, the collection of major events concerning God’s miracles at the Exodus – which was a very positive story. And secondly, a lesser-known account of what happened to some people who actively rebelled against God.

Concerning the Exodus – Among the events of God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt as particularly outstanding were the signs and wonders done to Pharaoh, the miraculous deliverance of the nation from a great and powerful country, and the defeat of the Egyptian army when swallowed alive by the waters of the Red Sea.

Concerning a Rebellion against the Ministry of Aaron – This account comprises the 16^th chapter of the book of Numbers. These Reubenite families, along with a host of Levites, disputed the selection of Aaron as the high priest to represent the nation before God. In the confrontation that followed, the result was that these rebels were swallowed up by the ground opening around them, others were burned alive by fire from the Lord, and a plague claimed another 14,700 lives before Aaron was able to quell it by his intercessory atonement.

We all have stories in our lives – accounts of when we found God to be our great provider and sustainer, yet accounts also of where we failed to trust in full obedience. The generations behind us need to hear these stories, as it gives them a framework upon which to build the values and decisions of their lives.

Deuteronomy 11:1-7

Love and Obey the Lord

11:1  Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. 2 Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; 3 the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; 4 what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. 5 It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. 7 But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done.

The question asked in the title today may be the most common question that comes to a pastor – though it may be expressed in varied forms. So what does the Lord want from his people – then or now? Well, the answer is rather simple, though, not to be trite about it, living it out in the details of life can be confusing at times. But, this is one time where it is not the Devil who is in the details, but the Lord God.

Look at this first verse in our reading today (verse 12). Moses gets really practical here with the application from all the history that he has been rehearsing about what God has accomplished and what the nation has done in response. Moses is essentially saying to this conquest generation: Here is what God wants from you …

–          To fear God – This means to appropriately honor and respect and acknowledge God accurately for who he is and what he has done.

–          To obey his commands – Does this need explanation? God has spoken; he has not stuttered.

–          To love God – Yes, this is a matter of passion and worship from a thankful heart that recognizes his goodness. Yet it is also evidenced, as is anything we love, by the amount of time and priority we give to it – to Him and to what He values.

–          To serve God – As immediately above, this means to prioritize those eternal values with all of who we are in our heart (mind) and soul (intellect, emotions, will) and strength (not stated here, but often in similar contexts).

Do you need some help and perspective in getting to the point of applying this? Look at verses 14 and 15, and see how they speak of something terribly vast, followed by something terribly small. In this context, it is the creation and the smallness of the nation of Israel – promised to Abraham individually, named after his grandson Jacob, comprising but 70 people some 400 years or so earlier when they all went to Egypt at the time of Joseph. And now, as Moses speaks to them, they numbered in the millions – and they, of all nations, were those upon whom God set his love… leading to a response of worship of lips and lives!

Hey! Listen! Don’t you see the same thing here about who we are in 2013?  We are those upon whom God has set his love by having Christ die for us. Out of all peoples, we have this calling, this truth made known to us, this grace lavished upon us through God’s Word and his sovereign arranging of circumstances of life that we may receive it and walk in its beauty. How do we respond to that? We do so with the worship of lips and lives. We praise God in the quiet moments of our personal adoration. We long to gather with others of like precious faith to join our praises in a swell we cannot render by ourselves, and we prioritize eternal values in the organization and administration of our personal lives and deeds.

Committing anew to this is …….. revival!

Deuteronomy 10:12-22

Fear the Lord

12 And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

14 To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. 15 Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. 16 Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. 20 Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. 21 He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. 22 Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

We live in the participation trophy era, where everyone is a winner simply for showing up. Everyone is good, and nobody is really bad. Youth sports get hit pretty hard with this criticism, though I understand the desire to encourage children to enjoy an activity before they face the pressures of performance. Yet I’ve seen this extreme grace extend pretty far into adolescence, and not just with sports. I’ve also observed it with such events as music competitions – where everyone gets a score of very good, excellent, or superlative. So the people who finished last weren’t losers, they were just the least of the very goods! It feels so much better that way!

Instead of picking on my runners I coached for this illustration, I’ll pick on myself. I was a good runner in high school, but I was on a very mediocre cross country team in a very small school. For some reason, our coach thought it would be a great and expansive experience for us to run against one of the better New Jersey public schools. And for some other reason I cannot imagine, this school invited us to run against them at their homecoming football game. When we got there, I have to say that I had never seen a school so large in my life – with an enrollment of about 3,000 students. We lined up to start the race at the beginning of halftime in this gigantic football stadium with thousands of people in attendance. I had never seen such big guys on a cross country team before. There were 39 of them, and 7 of us! I was a freshman on varsity – the last of our top 7 guys who were the only ones taken on this trip. I thought I was pretty good. However, I placed 46^th that day in front of thousands of people. The race finished with a final sprint down the middle of the field from one goalpost to the other. I didn’t hold up the game or anything, and I actually ran a decent time; I was just out of my league completely. Everything about the other team and school had the appearance of giants!

In our passage today, Moses gives this new generation the facts about the situation they are facing. They are going into a land where the people are indeed as big as their reputations, and their cities surrounded by walls were such as to appear to reach the sky. Everything about the human circumstances spelled certain doom for Israel – the Canaanites were too big, strong, and well-fortified to be defeated. BUT, the Israelites had the Lord to go before them, and that would render their victory as swift and certain.

Moses also warns the people against the natural sense of pride and arrogance that might follow these victories. In no way should the people think that it was because of their righteousness that God was doing this. No, not at all; they deserved the opposite. Rather it was because of the wickedness of the Canaanite peoples, the covenant promises of the Lord to Abraham and the patriarchs, and simply because of God’s grace.

I speak often in these devotionals and in my sermons about timeless truths and principles. Another of these is the tendency that we may believe, even in our generation, regarding our salvation in Christ – the inclination to think that we are in some fashion worthy of the gift of eternal life. It is certainly not likely to be so bold as to believe we are really not that bad, but perhaps rather it is a notion that we were so smart as to receive Jesus Christ. No, no… that’s not how it works. As it says in Titus 3:5, “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” It is always a gift of grace. Don’t be fooled. Revive your view of God’s grace.

Deuteronomy 9:1-6

9:1  Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. ² The people are strong and tall—Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?”  ³ But be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

⁴ After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. ⁵ It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ⁶ Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.

It is a distinctive of the American persona to especially value independence and to exalt the “can-do” spirit. That is a good thing, isn’t it?  Well, generally speaking, it is. We should be responsible with the abilities and strengths we’ve been given by God’s grace. Such is certainly affirmed in 2 Thessalonians 3 where it says, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’ We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies.”  And likewise, throughout all of Scripture, generosity toward those with genuine needs is applauded.

But there is a tendency when one has achieved success to self-indulge in the idea that one really made that happen all by oneself. And surely, discipline and fortitude have their rewards. But we need to remember that even our ability to have the capacity to reap the rewards of hard work is as well a gift from God. We need to remember this, even as the Israelites were reminded in the key verses of today’s passage: You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…

One of my militant midgets who always thinks herself to be sooo strong

This reminds me of my recently-ended coaching career. I am very proud of my teams and their many successes – particularly the three state championships. But by way of full disclosure, I had the wonderful good fortune of just happening upon five of the fastest runners to ever wear Williamsport blue and white – who just happened to be in the same graduating class. I think I made them better and made it fun, but frankly, God made them skinny and fast.

The second paragraph in today’s reading gives us some insight upon the condition of the nations surrounding Israel. These were people who had previously made their decisions to not follow God, but to rather build idols and replacement objects of worship. For that, they were judged by God – many of them being wiped out by the Israelite conquest of the land. But notice that, again, Israel would not be exempt from the same treatment if they were to reject these repeated admonitions to obey God’s commands.

It really is pretty dumb to not obey God, isn’t it? That’s a very clear reason to be revived!

Deuteronomy 8:10-20

¹⁰ When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. ¹¹ Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. ¹² Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. ¹⁷ You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

¹⁹ If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. ²⁰ Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.

Look at the four commands given in today’s reading:

1. Be careful to follow the Lord’s commands (verse 1), because following them will yield blessing and success. This is a theme repeated by Moses that we have already commented upon.

2. Remember God’s leading (verse 2) over the past 40 years – how God had indeed supplied. The way that God supplied for their physical needs taught them that there was more to life than just eating and surviving – that God’s word and his truth was even more essential. The instruction for the Israelites was to desire God himself more than the appetites of life itself. Of course, the phrase that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God is one that Christ would use to counterpunch Satan on the occasion of his temptation.

3. In verse 5, Moses encourages the people to know that there is a pattern to the way God works with his people. God disciplines his own as a good father would correct his son or daughter. The goal is the moral development of the child – a discipline with a view toward corrective love rather than punitive wrath. It is good for us to learn over time how God works in our lives. This is the value of a long walk with the Lord over extended years. One is able to see patterns and to hear the recognizable voice of a faithful father.

4. Observe the Lord’s commands (verse 6) – here it is again. Do you think this is the main idea of Moses’ exhortations? Over and over! Moses is saying again that the land they are entering is just so fantastic, so full of rich blessing, that it would be a travesty to blow it all by something so stupid as not obeying God.

If you want to know how to have a good future, look to the past and to those who have been blessed. They are those who obeyed and who learned, even at times through discipline, that trusting fully in God is the way to go. Yet this always proves to be mankind’s most difficult lesson, of course, due to the sin nature within.

There is a character of Roman mythology named “Janus” – who was the god of gates and doors. He was depicted as a two-headed creature – looking both to the past and to the future (and is the name of an investment firm with obvious implications). Of course there was no such God, and my point is not to exalt Janus, but to speak of the timeless wisdom of considering both the past and the future. We should neither live exclusively in one or the other, though we are obviously heading in one direction, like it or not. Our well-being in the future should be well-informed by the past – particularly by the truth that the same God who granted successes to the obedient of the past will grant the same to those obedient in the future.  That should revive us in terms of our faith and deeds.

Deuteronomy 8:1-9

8:1  Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. ² Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. ³ He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. ⁵ Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.

⁶ Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. ⁷ For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; ⁸ a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.