Deuteronomy 28:15-20 - Not A Tame Lion

God doesn't fit in the box we like to keep Him in.

Deuteronomy 28:15-20 (NIV)

CONTEXT: The first fourteen verses of chapter 28 set out the blessings that follow obeying the LORD our God. The verses below nearly perfectly parallel God's pronouncement of blessings, except that they explain the curses that result from disobedience.

15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:

16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.

17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.

18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.

63 (NET) This is what will happen: Just as the LORD delighted to do good for you and make you numerous, he will take delight in destroying and decimating you. You will be uprooted from the land you are about to possess.

Canons of Dordt

Point 1 - God's Unconditional Grace

Article 1 - God's right to condemn all people

Since all people have sinned in Adam

and have come under the sentence of
- the curse
- and eternal death,
God would have done no one an injustice if it had been his will
- to leave the entire human race in sin and under the curse,
- and to condemn them on account of their sin.

As the apostle says:

“The whole world is liable to the condemnation of God” (Rom. 3:19),
“All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and
“The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).

Summary

One thing that immediately becomes painfully apparent in today's passage is the comprehensive nature of the curse that follows disobedience: it affects city and country, food, and all of the products people produce. The curse has a stickiness to it; it can't be shaken by coming in or going out. Nothing will be exempted from it, for the LORD will send on the disobedient curses, confusion and rebuke in everything they put their hand to.

Passages like this help explain so much about why our world is the way that it is; why there's so much brokenness and pain, why things never seem to work out the way we hoped, and why it is that for every one problem that gets solved, a dozen more pop up in its place.

Always pay attention to transition words that you see in the Bible, like therefore, consequently, but, and, likewise, etc. These sort of words indicate that the sentences that follow can't be read in isolation, but must include the context and concepts that come before them to be correctly understood.

The transition word this passage begins with is critical: however. A cursed world is not the way things are supposed to be; it's not what God intended. God desires to pour blessings out upon His image bearers, however, if people do not carefully follow all of God's commands and decrees and persist in the evil they have done in forsaking Him, God will very justly turn from blessing to reigning down the curses such actions deserve.

Dig Deeper

One of the big lessons we're going to learn together this year is that we can not properly understand our salvation until we properly understand the God who saved us. Our passage today gives us a shocking insight as to who God is.

We love to think of God as One who delights to do good for us and make us numerous (v63). In fact, we often have an expectation that God is obligated to look past our indiscretions and give us not only what we need, but all that we want. But, as C.S. Lewis so famously put it, "our God is not a tame lion." In other words, He doesn't fit in the box we like to keep Him in.

We often forget that God loves perfect justice and righteousness (Ps. 33:5, Rev. 15:3). Consequently, God will also take delight in destroying and decimating those who persistently rebel against His commands. And since we're all guilty, the first thing that you must understand about your saving God is that He owes salvation to nobody. He could justly take just as much delight in destroying you as He could in saving you.

Today's passage may seem depressing and hopeless, but don't miss the two huge aspects of grace it reveals:

God does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities (Psalm 103:10). Everybody deserves every one of the curses outlined in Deuteronomy 28, but God gracefully holds the full effect of the curse back. Think of all the undeserved blessing He pours out despite people's sin!
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Even though you fully deserve God's curse and the destruction it leads to, you've been set free because Christ took it upon Himself in your place!

AAA Prayer (About)

ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who delights in blessing those who are obedient and cursing those who sin;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that as we learn surprising and difficult things about God, you will learn what it means to properly fear Him and keep His commandments (Eccl. 12:13);
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED: