Life or Death? Moses revisited.

I’m studying the book of James right now.  I could not be more behind on the schedule if I tried, but I am refusing to skip ahead.  Each verse builds on the one before and to miss any of it would be ignorant on my part, so I’m pressing on at a snail’s pace.  But as the Lord so often does for me (for all of us), He reveals Himself alive and active in His word, and speaks to my needs in the exact place that I am studying in scripture.  If you have read here at Playing Sublimely for any amount of time, you will have noticed a pattern in much of my writing.  I’m a girl that struggles.  I tend to over-obsess most life issues, and I often think deeper about details than is ever needed or necessary.  I have come to the certain conclusion that God drew me into the Moses bible study for this exact reason.  I was struggling and wrestling daily with life purpose, and God reveals so much of Himself through His relationship with Moses and the Israelites.   That study was life changing for me.  And dare I say that the book of Joshua is screaming at me from within the black leather cover of my bible?  I know there is more.  God didn’t walk away from His people that were still on earth, once He gathered their beloved Moses to his people in heaven.  He didn’t leave the Israelites scared to death outside their Promise Land without a leader (in fact, He left them with a leader who was scared to death, so that He could be glorified when someone that is afraid chooses to believe despite their fear).  And for you and I today,  He hasn’t left us alone outside our Promise Land either.

While reading James a few mornings ago, I was referenced back to Deuteronomy 30:19.  I immediately knew I was familiar with this piece of scripture, and as I read it, I laughed out loud at myself.  Not only was it speaking to my need at this very moment, not only was it offering direction and truth to me right where I am, but it is literally a piece of scripture that was a poignant intersection in the road for me during our Moses Study.  After all we had studied on the life of Moses, after every lesson learned, these words we hear him speak in Deuteronomy 30:19-20 in many ways sum up Moses’ purpose.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

I laughed out loud because clearly I haven’t stopped struggling over the very issue that I had written about over a year ago.  The. very. issue.  And so it surfaces again.  And I assume it will continue to resurface until the thing is resolved in me.  The Lord has committed to finishing the good work in us, the Spirit is willing.  He is too wise and holy to let some half-mastered issue in our heart, slide by with a “well that’s good enough attitude”.  God is not interested in the half-hearted.  He is fully committed to walking us into our Promise Land, and He is asking us from within the pages of His Word:  Are we fully committed to following Him into it?

I could stop here and simply provide a link back to the Moses Study, but my passion over the topic is begging me to physically attach it here on this post.  So I’m attaching it.  Will you read it with me again?  Read it as I did, as if I had never seen it before (or ironically, written it).  Allow God to encourage you here.  He gives us a choice, life or death.  The beautiful thing is if we would simply choose to believe Him, if we would literally choose life, then He promises to complete the good work.  The Lord knows our weaknesses, but when we choose Him, we are abundantly showered with all of His strengths.  I choose life. How ’bout you?

Deuteronomy 28 – 31: Blessings and Curses:

Oh what a chapter!  Did you by chance notice that the verses which contain the “Blessings for Obedience” are much shorter than the verses that contain the “Curses for Disobedience”?  Moses spared no detail in describing to the Israelites all that would happen to them if they did not obey God’s commandments (the least of which was that they would get “the itch” (verse 27)…I mean, whatever “the itch” is, I’m pretty sure I don’t want it).  The list relentlessly goes on, and on, and on.  The penalty for disobedience was a great one; and sadly, history will later prove that the Israelites eventually choose the path of disobedience…and they suffered the consequences.  Are you depressed yet?  Are you thinking to yourself that you could have done without reading Deuteronomy 28?  I was.  But wait, there’s more.  Let’s read Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 30: 15-20.  These are some of Moses’ final words, and in a way they sum up much of God’s purpose for Moses’ life.  Read them with great care and attention:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And so I sat wrestling with obedience vs. disobedience, blessings vs. curses, life vs. death.  I wrestled,  like perhaps you did (or are), wondering how I am ever going to be able to take possession of this place that God has for me, and how will I ever be able to keep it!  Because if I’m being honest, I mess up a lot!  I choose disobedience more often than I care to admit.  And so in my panic, while I was telling the Lord “I don’t want You to curse me with “the itch” (can you tell I’m afraid of what “the itch” is) God hit me with a fresh look at these verses.  He reminded me of what I already knew, but still struggle in believing.  Flip with me to the New Testament where we find a better covenant, a new covenant, and a covenant that you and I should be ever so grateful we are under.  Let’s read Hebrews 8: 7-13 together, and allow it to speak a better word over us:

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:

“The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,
and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.
This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.  I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.  I will be their God,
and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.  For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.

I was wrestling with an old covenant, when a better one has been provided by Grace.  These verses in Deuteronomy serve as a reminder to us of why we needed a Savior.  God knew that our flesh would eventually always choose disobedience; He knew that we would walk away from our Promise Land and back into captivity in Egypt, and He knew that we would sin and not keep His commandments.  And what is the punishment for sin?  Death.  While Moses was pleading with God’s children to choose life, God had already prepared for the reality that they would choose death.  The writer of Hebrews here in chapter 8 is actually quoting Jeremiah 31: 31-34 in these verses.  The prophet Jeremiah spoke these words many centuries before God sent His Son, many centuries before the New Covenant would be established.  The plan had been in place since the beginning of time!  The Israelites’ disobedience did not catch the Lord off guard and cause Him to come up with Plan B.  There was no Plan B.  God’s only plan was and still is Plan A, and all of history was leading up to His unveiling.

One last consideration before we put this issue to rest.  Just because we do not live under the covenant of the law, does not mean we are not called to its’ truths.  In fact, evidence that we believe God will be visible in our obedience and desire to keep His commandments.  Jesus himself tells us how critically important this is in Matthew 22: 36-40.  When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment of the Law, He replied:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Though we as New Covenant believers have been justified by the blood of Christ, we are still called to obedience of the law.  We will still bear the fruit of obedience, and often suffer the fleshly consequences of sin.  Some examples for us to consider might be:  If we choose to ignore the calling on our lives to be caring mothers to our children, you better believe we will suffer consequences to that.  If we choose to gossip about people in our lives, you can trust that we will eventually suffer its’ consequences.  If we choose to ignore the path the Lord is placing before us, then we can guarantee we will never step foot into our Promise Land.  Oh friend, though we as children of the New Covenant are able to rest assured that Christ has secured a place for us in heaven; we need not forget that our walk here on earth is not yet complete.  The good news is “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).  We are no longer bound by our former chains of sin.  God’s New Covenant is not written on stone tablets anymore, but rather in the hearts of His children.  The same God that wrote the law on the tablets before Moses, also hung on a cross declaring a new way.  He chose death, so that we could choose Life.  The choice is ours my friends, may we choose wisely.

Love, Amy

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