The covenant confirmed
29
📚These are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb. 29:1 God wanted this new generation to make a new beginning as they face the promised land, so He renews the covenant with them which He had made at Sinai (Exodus chapter 19).⚜
2 📚And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 📚the great trials, the signs, and those great miracles which your eyes have seen.
4 📚Yet even to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear.
5 📚And I led you forty years in the desert. Your clothes did not become old on you, and your shoes did not become old on your feet. 6 📚You did not eat bread, and you did not drink wine or strong drink, so that you might know that I am the LORD your God.
7 📚And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we struck them down, 8 📚and took their land, and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.
9 📚Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, so that you may prosper in all that you do. 10 📚Today all of you stand before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, 11 📚your little ones, your wives, and your foreigners who are in your camp, from those who cut your wood to those who draw your water, 12 📚so that you should enter into a covenant with the LORD your God, and into his oath, which the LORD your God makes with you today, 13 📚that he may establish you today as a people for himself, and that he may be God to you, as he has said to you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
29:12-13 The covenant was that He would be their God and they would be His people (Ex 6:6-7). Now believers in Christ have this greatest of all privileges and blessings (2 Cor 6:16; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet 2:9-10).⚜
14 📚And I do not make this covenant and this oath just with you, 15 📚but both with the one who stands here with us today before the LORD our God, and with the one who is not here with us today.
16 📚For you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the nations which you came through. 17 📚And you saw their abominations and their idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them. 18 📚If there should be among you man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of these nations, if there should be among you a root that bears gall and bitterness,
29:18 Deut 32:32. Idolatry and worship of gods other than the Creator Jehovah are bitter poison.⚜
19 📚and when he hears the words of this curse, it so happens that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, “I will have peace even though I walk according to the imagination of my heart to add drunkenness to thirst”, 20 📚the LORD will not spare him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will burn against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 📚And the LORD will single him out for disaster from all the tribes of Israel, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law.
29:19-21 The warning here is against the person who knows the curse of God on idolatry and false worship and yet arrogantly, presumptuously engages in it, knowing he is acting against God (1 Sam 2:25; 2 Chron 36:16; Prov 1:24-31; 29:1).⚜
22 📚And the coming generation of your children who will rise up after you, and the foreigner who will come from a distant land, will speak out when they see the plagues of that land and the sicknesses which the LORD has brought on it, 23 📚and that the whole of its land has become sulfur and salt and burning, that it is not sown and does not produce, and that no grass grows on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and in his wrath, 24 📚then all nations will say, “Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this great burning anger?”
25 📚Then men will say, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 26 📚For they went and served other gods and worshipped them, gods whom they did not know and whom he had not given to them. 27 📚And the anger of the LORD burned against this land to bring on it all the curses that are written in this book. 28 📚And the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and in wrath and in great indignation, and drove them into another land, as it is this day”.
29:28 2 Chron 7:20; Ps 52:5; Prov 2:22; Ezek 19:12-13. Notes on God’s anger at Num 25:3; Ps 90:7-11; John 3:36; Rom 1:18.⚜
29 📚The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may do all the words of this law.
29:29 Acts 1:7. There are many things God has not yet revealed. We must leave those mysteries to Him. He has revealed all we need to know on this earth to believe Him, know Him, obey Him, serve Him, love Him, and be prepared to live with Him forever. Let us occupy ourselves with these matters. Compare John 15:15; 17:8; 1 Cor 2:9-10; 2 Tim 3:16-17.⚜