This covenantal relationship which God had established with Israel sent a very clear message to the surrounding nations. For those who willingly choose to serve God, there was blessing! For those nations who choose to stand against God and His people, there was swift and thorough judgment.
1. Miraculous blessings for obedience.
Deut. 29:5-6 “And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot. Ye haves not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that ye might know that I am the LORD your God.”
V9 “Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.”
2. Curses for rejecting God’s authority.
V19-20 “And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.”
V24-26 “Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:”
LESSON - Notice in this passage, God even addresses the individual who desires peace which only God can offer, but tries to obtain it by alternate means. The Utopian ideal by which mankind strives for “peace from within” is a fallacy contrived through fantasy and “imagination of the heart” or emotions. It cannot be obtained because it’s built upon the false premise that mankind is basically good, therefore it can never be obtained because it does not exist outside of Jesus Christ. There is nothing sadder than a Believer who forsakes the Lord for eternal pleasures which can never be obtained through earthly means. Even the Lost will not experience sorrow to this degree this side of eternity. Don’t be deceived into believing that the world has anything to offer which will satisfy you long term. Otherwise, God will allow “the heat of this great anger” towards you to serve as a warning to the Lost and Saved alike!
~Mike