“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. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. 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. But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. And the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the Lord will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul.” (v1-2,11,64-65)
This chapter explicitly lays out a list of blessings for obeying God (14 verses), and a long list of curses for disobeying God (54 verses). Why are there four times as many verses about curses than blessings? Are curses more plentiful than blessings, or was God trying to get a point across?
Feel free to read the chapter for yourself, or simply take my word for it, but these are not curses one would wish for, and you probably wouldn’t wish them upon your worst enemies either. In a way, this lengthy list of curses is prophetic since most, if not all of these curses, did come to pass at some point in history, or are coming to pass now. Why did these curses come to pass? Based on this passage and later passages in scripture, Israel disobeyed God and broke His commandments, so God kept His word. Well known examples of these curses in history could be pinpointed as events like Israel’s destruction / captivity by Babylon, or more recently the Holocaust – these events were so brutal for the nation, yet God warned His people these things could happen.
The thing is, God doesn’t want people to suffer – I believe He was trying to warn the people, not threaten them. God is a God of love, joy and peace – He is not sadistic, He does not take pleasure in watching people suffer. His moral will is for everyone to live with Him in paradise (ie. the original Garden of Eden, or the new heaven and earth). I believe God’s heart behind listing these terrible things is to plead with people: “Please, keep my commandments, because I really don’t want you to suffer all of these atrocities.”
Unfortunately, all of the terrible things that happened to people in the past, and will happen to people in the future, are a consequence of sin. God did not choose these consequences – we did. My challenge for today is to help people understand that there is a God, and He is a God of love. He doesn’t desire for there to be pain and suffering in this world, yet He allows it as a consequence of our sin, in the hope that it will draw people back to following Him.
Father God, our Lord and King, we come before you today a broken and suffering people. We recognize that we have done this to ourselves. Please continue to forgive and uplift us, freeing us from our voluntary slavery and destruction. Please help us once more be Your people, and submit to You alone as our God. When we do so, may those around us come to understand that You do exist, and You love them as much as Your chosen people – for we are all chosen by You, though we do not all choose You. Please be our guide and light, so we in turn may and be guides and lights unto this world. In the name of our King and Savior Jesus we ask this, amen.
~ Conqueror in Training