Deuteronomy 19-30

In these chapters, more laws are given and re-hashed, blessings are promised as reward for obedience, and curses are assured for disobedience. The Pentateuch is coming to a close, and soon the Israelites will be entering the promised land. Thus, I thought this week would be a good opportunity to reflect over these first 5 books, and their significance to the 21st-century believer.

So what has happened in these nearly 200 chapters? In Genesis, God creates a perfect universe and establishes a perfect relationship with mankind (chapters 1-2). Mankind immediately and repeatedly rebels against God, destroying that relationship (3-11). God responds by setting aside one family line for His purposes (the rest of the book). He then rescues Israel from slavery and hands them a long set of laws which they are to follow as His people (Exodus and Leviticus). Throughout all this, He has been promising to take them to a prosperous land, but as they travel there they continue to rebel, and must be continually reminded of the laws (Numbers and Deuteronomy).

One interpretation of this over-all story would be to take this as symbolic of a believer’s life. Because of sin, we are born into slavery, God rescues us and expect us to live worthy of our calling. We fail, time and time again, but God is faithful. But what, then, is the land of Canaan symbolic of? From the descriptions of great prosperity and blessing, one would be tempted to equate it with Heaven. But that doesn’t make sense – we know that Israel will continue to rebel and do evil after entering the land. So what was the point of these books? What is this culmination of hundreds of years of God’s working?

This would seem to be a very important question. After all, most of the Old Testament, two-thirds of the whole text of the Bible, is dedicated to talking about Israel. Surely, then, God wants us to know the significance of His plan with them. I don’t know His full purposes, but here are a few things which have been clearly re-enforced in my brain over these last few months about Israel:

• The utterly wicked heart of man. Time, and time, and time, and time again, Israel has acted out. They have stared at incredible miracles, and ignored them. They have whined and thrown temper-tantrums and flat-out disobeyed. Clearly, they are not upheld as a model for us to live by, but for us to avoid acting like them in our lives.
• The faithfulness of God. Yes, there are difficult things in these books. Many times God strikes them with plagues, and kills thousands in anger. He puts in place terribly arcane laws and insists that they be upheld strictly. Sometimes He even seems to be capricious and self-contradicting. But, through it all, He stays with the people of Israel, and leads them to the promised land. Clearly, He is doing something vast and incredible here, and will not be deterred.
• The holiness of God. We have it so easy in the 21st century. We are indwelt with the Holy Spirit, so we consider God just our big Buddy in the sky. We have lost the awe and the fear and the reverence that Israel lived under on a daily basis. It transformed their entire lives.
• The longevity of the struggle to live the Christian life. By this I mean that we must tirelessly, determinedly, daily, fight, every day for the rest of our lives to live the Christian life. Israel didn’t “arrive” when it left Egypt. It didn’t stop at Sinai, or at Kadesh-Barnea, or even when they took the land. Even after they take the land, we know that their fight to be a truly Godly nation went on through the time of the judges, the kings, the exiles, and so on. I must be prepared to dig in, and take the fight to sin.

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