Deuteronomy 28:58 – 68 “If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God— He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses. He will afflict you again with all the diseases you dreaded in Egypt, and they will cling to you.
The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left few in number, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.
Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and to multiply you, so also it will please Him to exterminate you and destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, not even a resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing soul.
So your life will hang in doubt before you, and you will be afraid night and day, never certain of survival. In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see.
The LORD will return you to Egypt in ships by a route that I said you should never see again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.”
These verses complete the summary of the curses God will bring on the Israelites if they fail to serve Him. All the plagues of Egypt plus more, being carried into exile, and returning to Egypt where they will not even find employment as slaves – all these things will happen if the Israelites go back on their word to serve God.
God is trying to make His warnings as strong as possible so that the Israelites will remain faithful to Him. Eventually, all these curses really do come to pass, including the return to Egypt.
The story is a very sad one because it is so unnecessary. God doesn’t want the Israelites to break their covenant with Him. God wants the Israelites to be spiritually and physically healthy and prosperous and to demonstrate to other nations the goodness of God. But Israel begins to take God for granted and very soon some of the curses begin to work.
APPLICATION: Look around you! What blessings has God placed in your life? Even if you are suffering from COVID, you are still alive and you can praise God for your life. So many times we behave like the Israelites; we take God’s blessings for granted when we should be eternally grateful.
Sometimes it IS difficult to find something for which to be thankful, but we should try. If you are reading this, then you are able to breathe and you are able to see. Thank God! Thank God for your computer or your cell phone. Thank God that He has a plan for you for today and that He will make that plan clear.
The big mistake the Israelites made was that they were ungrateful and refused to thank God for all His blessings. Ingratitude led to heresy and heresy led to disaster.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Help us to find the little things throughout our day for which we can praise You. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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