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The Gospel Lies

There are lies we tell ourselves and lies we are told by others. The problem is when we believe those lies in connection with the Truth God has already given us. For instance, some will believe that the Gospel is complicated. The Bible may not always be easy to understand, but the Good News is not complicated.



God is good. I am needy. God meets my need. It's pretty simple and fairly straight-forward.



If you need more evidence than that, head over to Deuteronomy 28.

We find ourselves in the last days of Moses and the desert wanderings. God is prepared to take His people into the Promised Land. God has told Moses he won’t be going, which could be part of the reason Moses decides to review the entire Law with the Israelites. ‘Just before I climb this mountain to die, let’s read the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers together, shall we?’

But in Deuteronomy 28 we find Moses listing out the blessings the Israelite people can expect for being obedient. It takes about 14 verses and it can be summed up with, ‘You’ll be blessed everywhere and in every way until it is coming out of your ears.’

Then Moses drives the point home by describing the curses the Israelites can expect if they are disobedient. Whereas the blessings are detailed from verse 1 to verse 14, the curses take more time and last from verse 15 to verse 44, I suppose, because Moses wanted to add the gory details of how bad it would be. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 14 verses for blessing and 29 for curses. You might assume that Moses has made his point and that he’s finished. But he’s not!

Moses goes on for the rest of the chapter, which does not end until verse 68. That’s an extra 24 verses detailing what will happen when God has had it up to here and decides to purge the Israelites from the land. You can go read it for yourself, it’s not pretty.

Let’s not lose the big picture here. Moses was detailing what we now know as Israelite history in the Old Testament before it ever happened. When we disobey and ignore God, bad things happen. When we choose to follow after God and seek His will and find what pleases Him, the good that will come our way can be summed up in 14 verses. 
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