Day 87 – The Story of Their Rebellion

• Today is the last of our readings looking at parts of  Moses’ sermon to the Israelite people. What exciting event is just about to happen (look at the start of the reading)?
• Why is God about to drive out the nations who are currently in the Promised Land? Is it because of Israel’s righteousness and general awesomeness? Focus in on verses 4 and 5 of Deuteronomy 9 to find out, as well as the much of the rest of the chapter! It was common at the time to think of winning battles as an indication of a nation’s righteousness. God warned against thinking like that.
• How does Moses describe the people as he recalls the different stories?
• How do you think the people would have felt as they heard the stories about their parents, such as one that dominates our readings about the sorry affair of the golden calf?
• What do we learn about God’s mercy in these passages? Does He have a short temper or is He full of repeated grace, mercy and forgiveness?
• How does this give us hope for ourselves, and the knowledge of all the times in our history where we’ve rebelled against God?
• If God is always merciful to us, does that mean that there are no consequences for our sin? Why?
• Deuteronomy 10:12-22 is a real focal point. Not only are we told to “fix” our hearts, but we are told to love the “sojourner”, which means stranger or foreigner. God reminds them that they were sojourners in Egypt. How are we like sojourners ourselves?  How have we been loved?
• Psalm 78 gives a poetic interpretation of Israel during the time in the Egypt and the desert. The passage appears to ends abruptly in verse 59, but be sure to understand that when it says God “utterly rejected Israel”, it means he cut off the people who were originally rescued from Egypt. He did, of course, act mercifully to their descendants who enjoyed the fruits of the Promised Land to come.

Think about the structure of these words in Deuteronomy. Moses carefully maps out the historical sin that took place 39 or so years earlier by the people, and how God showed His mercy throughout, despite their being consequences for their sin. And look where they are now. They are a mighty nation and on the very edge of entering into the land that was promised all those years ago to their (very) great grandfather. It’s an awesome moment from an awesome God who keeps His promises. Now all Israel have to do is learn from their past sin and march forward to the blessings to come, loving and serving their redeeming Lord. I wonder how well they’ll do…!

We’re about to skip twenty chapters of Moses’ history lesson in Deuteronomy. You may want to cast your eyes over them briefly to see if anything interesting catches you. Next week the sermons stop and the battle for the new land begins with the warrior Joshua. I can’t wait to dig into it with you guys.