Monday, February 27, 2023

Today’s Scripture Reading
Deuteronomy 8:1–20

This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you. Therefore keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper.

You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you. Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. (NRSV)

Reflection

In Deuteronomy 8, God reveals that the purpose for the Israelites’ forty-year Outward Bound experience was to test their hearts: to know whether they would obey God and keep God’s commandments in order to do them good in the end. Fast-forward to Deuteronomy 29:4. Moses observes, “But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.” And in Deuteronomy 31:16, God foretells that the Israelites would disobey and succumb to idolatry. Yet God still allows them to enter the Promised Land. Knowing this, what do we make of Deuteronomy in which God promises blessings for obedience and death for disobedience?

The law was humanly impossible to keep. Why would God place impossible demands on the people? Did God set them up to fail? Was it a forty-year sham trial?

Is God really good?

We read God’s word through the lens of our personalities, life histories, worldviews, and cultural contexts. For some (much of my life included), God may seem an impossible boss. The words are there for all to read. But it is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit to adjust our lenses through which we read God’s word and internalize it.

I can see now that God did not set the Israelites up to fail but to set the world up to give us Jesus as our Savior. The test is impossible to pass without the answer key. All the attributes of God are held in tension. Without Jesus, I can’t render God internally consistent.

“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).

Prayer

Dear God, thank you for not giving up on us. Please help each of us see, understand, and love you in truth. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Written by Jeanette Chung, Member of Fourth Presbyterian Church

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