As Moses prepared to say goodbye the Israel (who were soon to be led by Joshua into the Promised Land), he recorded a series of speeches designed to impress upon the people the Law of God and the expectations of Heaven. We call these speeches “Deuteronomy,” which means “second Law.” The book is, essentially, a second-telling of the Law of Moses.
In the course of that, Moses takes a minute to explain to Israel that if they fail to uphold their end of the bargain (obeying the Law God gave them), then the Lord would stop upholding His end of the bargain (blessing them as obedient children). And when I saw Moses “takes a minute” I mean he ran down a list that was just insanely long, ya’ll.
In this list, Moses recorded all manner of hardships, punishments, and curses the people could expect should they not follow God’s Law. You can find the list in its entirety in Deuteronomy 28. The chapter is sixty-eight verses long, and includes both a list of blessings to the obedient and curses to the disobedient. The blessings take up the first fifteen verses. The rest, well…
Moses:
Among the highlights are God cursing the people’s bread, the people’s babies, and the people’s backs. In all, there are over fifty verses worth of curses recorded, which contain over one-hundred specifically mentioned curses. In the middle of it, God promises them “you will be unsuccessful in everything you do” (v29), which seems comprehensive enough that He could have just said that, but instead he made sure to spell out every particular bad thing that would happen to the people if they disobeyed.
I say all that to say this:
The next time someone tries to tell you that God doesn’t care about the details or that God will just overlook this sin or that sin, point them in the direction of Deuteronomy 28, and let them see for themselves just how much God cares about disobedience.
~ Matthew