Deuteronomy 29:1-29
Renewal of the Covenant
1 These are the terms of the covenant the LORD commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
2 Moses summoned all the Israelites and said to them:
Your eyes have seen all that the LORD did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials and to all his land. 3 With your own eyes you saw those great trials, those signs and great wonders. 4 But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear. 5 Yet the LORD says, “During the forty years that I led you through the wilderness, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet. 6 You ate no bread and drank no wine or other fermented drink. I did this so that you might know that I am the LORD your God.”
7 When you reached this place, Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan came out to fight against us, but we defeated them. 8 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh.
9 Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do. 10 All of you are standing today in the presence of the LORD your God—your leaders and chief men, your elders and officials, and all the other men of Israel, 11 together with your children and your wives, and the foreigners living in your camps who chop your wood and carry your water. 12 You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the LORD your God, a covenant the LORD is making with you this day and sealing with an oath, 13 to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 14 I am making this covenant, with its oath, not only with you 15 who are standing here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God but also with those who are not here today.
16 You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. 17 You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.
19 When such a person hears the words of this oath and they invoke a blessing on themselves, thinking, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way,” they will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. 20 The LORD will never be willing to forgive them; his wrath and zeal will burn against them. All the curses written in this book will fall on them, and the LORD will blot out their names from under heaven. 21 The LORD will single them out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.
22 Your children who follow you in later generations and foreigners who come from distant lands will see the calamities that have fallen on the land and the diseases with which the LORD has afflicted it. 23 The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulfur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the LORD overthrew in fierce anger. 24 All the nations will ask: “Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?”
25 And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. 26 They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. 27 Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. 28 In furious anger and in great wrath the LORD uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”
29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
God is love (1 John 4:8)...But God does get angry...Love and anger can be linked...As we read through the entire Old Testament we read that He gets angry and we read about His wrath...The first time I read about His anger, I really didn't understand it...God's getting anger made me uncomfortable...It was not that I never get angry...But anger seems an emotion of not tolerating another, and with God being Almighty, what might happen...I feared the LORD...But anger is an important emotion for Him and us...
God is love...He wants lovers...He wants us to have a personal relationship with Him...Man is not perfect...To relate anger to love, if your spouse betrays you -how do you feel?...Anger is the natural feeling, and must be felt...Even though your spouse has angered you, you still love them...When we sin, we betray God...He gets angry...Moses speaks, in these verses, to the people as a nation now...They have many experiences in the desert wandering and are now one people...Moses in telling this to the Israeli people, he tells the people if they sin and turn from the LORD, He will get angry...God will discipline them with some hardships...
Moses also tells them that God has not given us a mind that understands (everything) or eyes that have seen or ears that have heard (everything)...During the forty years in the desert, they wandered the desert and their clothes did not wear out, nor in the forty years their sandals did not wear out, and they ate no bread or drank no wine...God did this to show them and us that He is I AM...Even these small miracles in the desert shows, He is our LORD...The people have been through so much together...In the last verses Moses tells the new nation that all secret things belong to the LORD our God, and the things He revealed to them in the desert will make them His children forever...God hopes that we will follow His law and His moral and righteous ways that are written in the law...
When the Israeli people do not follow the law, He gets angry...But He is not anger with the person or people in general, He is angry at them for the sin they have committed...Another analogy might be when you have teenage children, and they want complete control and do things that might make you angry... Well, we are like teenage children...We want God's free will until we suffer with pain and grief...Then we do not want free will...We want Him to intervene and take away our suffering and pain... Teenagers seem to upset their parents with the complete freedom they want, and some of the things they do...God is the like that teenage Father...Discipline from our sin, is necessary...And He gets mad when we sin...When the teenager does something wrong you are not happy, but are angered...Discipline is necessary...
This discipline is a large part of the Old Testament...God has chosen the people of Israel...Our LORD is the the God of Israel...God disciplines His people...Throughout the Old Testament, with Moses, the Wisdom Books, and the Prophets, gives us the account of this disciplining process...When we sin, He gets angry...It is the right emotion to show...God loves us, He has to get angry when we sin...He is sin free...When we think about it, we do not want a nice, tolerant God, we really do need a loving God...So when God gets anger, it is an expression of His love...Nice and tolerance, maybe a small part of love, but they are not love...You can easily be nice and tolerant to someone or even many and not love them...When God is angry with us, we have sinned...When He is angry, it means He has not left us, but is with us, even though His company and closeness, we may be getting disciplined...