Wrapping up Deuteronomy, Moses’ long sermon with lots of detail closes in chapter 26. Then begins a series of challenges for the people to be obedient.

Chapter 27 frames the challenge to obedience as curses. For example:

“Cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image, an abomination to the LORD, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret.” And all the people shall answer and say, “Amen.” (Deuteronomy 27.15, ESV)

Chapter 28 gives blessings for obedience for the first 14 verses then goes back to curses for disobedience for verses 15 – 68. For example:

All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever. Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. (Deuteronomy 28.45 – 48, ESV)

That’s a lot of space given to curses, designed, perhaps, to frighten the people into obedience. (We’ll see as we read Joshua – Esther next year, that it didn’t work.)

Then a call to choose, summarized in Chapter 30:

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live… (Deuteronomy 30.15 – 19, ESV)

It’s the week leading up to Christmas, a good time to look at the obedience of the folks in the Christmas story. Humanly speaking, without their obedience, there wouldn’t be a Christmas story.

And we would do well to remember that even in this age of “grace,” God expects obedience. Jesus said:

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him…If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. (John 14.21, 23, 24, ESV)