Rebellion

Deuteronomy 4:25-27 states:

"After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you."

You should have noticed by now that the notion of obeying the Lord is  becoming a recurring motif in Deuteronomy, and we'll see soon enough why this was done. In today's reading, Moses recounted the times when the people of Israel rebelled against the Lord in most of Chapter 9. As all of us are quite aware, past behavior is an excellent predictor of future behavior, and the people of Israel had built up quite a resume of rebellion to this point.

However, things start to change a bit in Deuteronomy. In the past readings, the people rebelled, the Lord punished them or Moses intervened for them, and the people repented. All got pretty good at this sequence, since it was repeated over and over and over. God here adds an additional element--he tells them they WILL be punished for disobedience and is pretty specific in what the punishment will be. We will read in the coming months how prophetic these words will become.

Before we begin patting ourselves on the back for being smarter than the people of Israel, are we doing any better? Christ was kind enough to distill Levitic law down from over 600 to 2:

1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind

2. Love your neighbor as yourself

How's that working out for us? Given the mumbled answer you just made to yourself, why should we expect any different punishment than the people of Israel. We all know the answer, so let me rephrase the question as:

Don't we DESERVE the same punishment as the people of Israel?

Scott