Blessed by God (Part 4): Do This and Live

    For some time now I have enjoyed watching ESPN’s College Gameday, a Saturday television broadcast in the fall which analyzes the day’s upcoming college football games. One of the analysts has a well known phrase for contesting points made by his colleagues: “Not so fast, my friend,” Lee Corso says. It is almost as if we hear these words from Scripture when we come to Mount Sinai. Abraham is justified freely by grace alone through faith alone, he and his descendants receive incredible promises from God, but as his children cross the Red Sea and come to Mount Sinai they are told in effect to “Do this and live” as they are given the Decalogue. Which is it, the simple promise that Abraham received or the command? What brings life, law or gospel?  In the great plot of the redemptive drama we encounter twists and turns even early on in the story. The fall comes quickly, the earth is destroyed save eight souls and enough animals to replenish the earth, Abraham is told to slaughter his son, Jacob steals the birthright, Levi and Simeon enter Shechem with swords to kill all the males of the city, and finally Joseph and eventually all of Jacob’s family find themselves in Egypt where following generations would become slaves under Pharaoh. But this story is about redemption, and the Lord redeems his people from Egypt, judging the nation and its gods, and ultimately drowning Pharaoh in the water ordeal. Israel was brought out with a mighty hand . “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot” (Psalm 66:5-6a). We expect them to march right in to the land promised to them through Abraham but we find them camping at the foot of Sinai to receive the law of God.

    Earlier we saw the Lord enter into a covenant with Abraham as the animal carcasses were severed and the presence of God passed between the halves. Archaeological discoveries have shown us the similarities in ancient eastern treaties and the covenant documents of the Old Testament. God is the great king, the suzerain Lord, and Israel is the vassal, the lesser king. Typically a prologue was given with the greater king’s names and titles as well as his acts toward the lesser people. The stipulations were laid out to the people as well as the consequential blessings or curses for obedience or rebellion to the covenant. We see these elements particularly in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. In the preface to the ten commandments God proclaims who he is and what he has done; he is the Lord, the God of Heaven who has redeemed Israel from the land of Egypt. The laws of the covenant are given in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy and then the blessings and curses are proclaimed to the covenant people. If the people are obedient to the laws of the Great King then they will receive blessing, but if they are disobedient they will be cursed. The people heard the word of God through Moses “and all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do’”(Exodus 24:3, 7). Moses then threw the blood of the covenant on the people who had declared their covenant vows. One cannot help but the notice the stark contrast between God’s covenant with Abraham and his covenant with the nation of Israel. In the Abrahamic covenant the Lord of the covenant says “All this I will do” as he passed between the animal pieces, now the roles are reversed as Abraham’s children are delivered from Egypt and the blood is one their hands, so to speak. Yahweh makes promises to them but these promises are conditioned upon the obedience of the people.

The Children of Promise Cursed?

    I have always been fond of the story of Balaam, the pagan prophet hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel in the wilderness. You may remember Balaam as the man who was rebuked by his own donkey (Numbers 22). Balaam’s renown was known to Balak king of Moab who said, “I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed” (Numbers 22:6). As much as Balaam tried he could not curse Israel. Instead, Balaam heard the word of God saying, “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (Number 22:12).  The extent of Balaam’s knowledge of the true God is unknown to us and though the Lord used Balaam to confirm his promises to Israel and to speak his word, Balaam stands through time as an example of a false prophet (2 Peter 2:15; Jude 11). Four oracles Balaam spoke from different locations with animal sacrifices either for pagan religious purposes or for the use of divination, but four times he failed in cursing the people. “How can I curse whom God has not cursed?” Balaam asked in his first oracle. He said later “he [God] has blessed, and I cannot revoke it….The Lord their God is with them….How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your encampments, O Israel!…” (Numbers 23:20-21; 24:5). God’s blessing of this people could be traced back to his promise to Abraham “Blessed are those who bless you, and cursed are those who curse you” (Numbers 24:9). Balaam spoke of Israel as an exalted kingdom (Numbers 24:7) with a mighty king who would rise and “crush the forehead of Moab” (Numbers 24:17), a prophecy fulfilled in David and ultimately in David’s greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Israel could not be cursed for if God blesses his people, no curse against them can stand.(1) What is so shocking to read as the Old Testament is unfolded is that Israel does find itself under a curse; not because of a pagan prophet’s incantation, but because the people failed in their covenant obligations to their Great King. When Adam failed to obey God, he and Eve were exiled from the garden. Soon enough Israel would be in exile as well, taken captive by the nations around them. The covenant curses would eventually come upon the holy nation. Obedience for Israel would mean that they would be overtaken by covenant blessings (Deuteronomy 28:2), but failure to obey would bring the opposite. They would be overtaken by the curse.

    Upon entering the promised land of Canaan, Israel’s new leader Joshua was given a command from the Lord through his predecessor Moses regarding the blessings and curses of the covenant (Deuteronomy 27:9-26). When the people crossed the Jordan River, which marked the border, half of the tribes were to stand on Mount Gerizim and half were to stand on Mount Ebal. The book of the covenant was to be read in the hearing of the people, all of the law with the blessings and curses. Those on Mount Gerizim stood to bless the people for their obedience while those on Mount Ebal stood to curse them for their disobedience. As Moses gives instruction to Joshua regarding the curses for specific acts of disobedience, we find that many of these acts are sins committed in secret. A number of these deeds could be acted out away from the public eye, some of which may never have the possibility of appearing before a human court. F.F. Bruce writes, “Therefore no specific penalty is prescribed for each offence mentioned, but Yahweh is called upon in effect to execute his curse on the wrongdoer.”(2) We see this play out as the people enter the land under Joshua when Achan and his family are executed for his secret sin revealed to Joshua by the Lord (Joshua 7). “Be sure,” the Lord says, “your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). Secret sins are brought to the light in God’s presence (Psalm 90:8), and on the last day the secrets of men will be judged (Romans 2:16) for “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). The Scriptures have a way of laying us open, of cutting us deep within like a two-edged sword, allowing us to see what lies in our hearts, to see what God sees. King David said of the Lord, “You desire truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6 NKJV). Only those with clean hands and a pure heart may stand before the Lord. When Jesus begins his teaching ministry, he confirms the words of the law to us, not making the commandment lighter I might add, but bringing it into full scope. Man is an adulterer if he has looked upon a woman with lust, he is a murderer if he has hated another. The commandment is meant to be obeyed in full with heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). Jesus does not give us a lighter version of the law to keep, he drops the full weight of the commandment on our consciences.

    Right about now is the time when we normally rise up against the demands of God. This seems so unfair to the people that they must keep every jot and tittle of the law. We want to be freed from this burden of law, or so we think. The truth is that we are all wired for law keeping. “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do,” the people said. Typically, we will do one of two things: either we will look to someone we consider greater than ourselves, perhaps God or a successful leader, and make an attempt to keep their law, or we will look within to our own standards and seek to live up to our own moral code, which may or may not be very high at all. Humans (especially Americans who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps) love to hear the words “do this and live” whether it is a command to keep in order to inherit eternal life or seven steps to debt relief, a fulfilled marriage, or just becoming a better person. If you give me a list of to-do’s to check off in order to get what I desperately want or think I need, I will take it every time. We are wired that way, for obedience to some standard - though we may have created our own, and this is because we are made in the image a holy God who gave us the commandment in the beginning to fulfill - a commandment that we failed to obey. Many of us live with a low grade guilt that we have grown accustomed to. It is always there. We know we have failed to live up to God’s standard, we know this partly because we have failed to live up to our own. We sense God’s curse in our consciences, for the law is written there (Romans 2:15) and it says “Cursed by anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them” (Deuteronomy 27:26). The law of God reveals the requirement of God for perfect obedience from those made in his image. The law is an expression of the will of God, the commandment is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), and yet it brings a curse. However the problem does not lie with  the law itself, the problem is in the human heart which rebels against the holy law of God. The problem is in our inability to keep it. Israel broke the covenant and the land vomited them out as the Lord had said. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah came as covenant attorneys prosecuting Yahweh’s case against the people for their unfaithfulness announcing to them imminent exile.

The Great Dilemma

    What irony we find in the redemptive story that Balaam and Israel’s enemies could not curse this “blessed” people but that they come underneath the curse of the very one who had blessed them! Can a blessed people be cursed? Balaam said no. If they are indeed cursed, could they ever be blessed? This is the great dilemma of the Old Testament, and a manifold dilemma it is. How can God bless the people when they are under his curse? How can God curse those whom he has blessed? This all sounds much more complicated than the promise that first came to Abraham. Has God gone back on his promise, did he fail to give to Abraham the fine print of the deal received by the following generations? The whole earth and its inhabitants lie under the curse of God because of man’s fall in the garden (Isaiah 24:5-6), but Israel was supposed to be different. They were those redeemed by the strong hand of the Lord. They have been given incredible promises by the Lord that he would dwell with them, be their God, and that they would be his people. Will they go the way of all mankind?

    Recently, my oldest son (who is still very young) brought to me a metal slinky that had been twisted and turned every way imaginable. Of course, he wanted me to untangle the mess, but to make matters worse a jump rope was intertwined through the metal loops. It is hard to believe all of this could happen at the bottom of a toy box, but few things surprise me with a house full of rowdy boys. The point is that his request of me was nearly impossible, so bad that I told him we would purchase another slinky - one that would not find its way in with all of the other toys. Understanding how God could bless and curse these people in making unconditional promises to them and simultaneously requiring them to keep his commands, seems to be much more complicated than untangling a slinky. What we should remember as the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David are unfolded is that the Bible is a progressive revelation. We are made to understand more as the story moves forward. God made his promise to Abraham to bless him and his seed, but the covenant obligations and sanctions given to his children revealed the great cost that would come for this promised blessing.



1. http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/loveofgod/2010/05/14/numbers-23-psalms-64-65-isaiah-13-1-peter-1/
2. Bruce, F.F. New International Greek Testament Commentary on Galatians. Eerdmans. 1982. P 158.