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Dave Burnette's Commentary

Deuteronomy Chapter 29

Written By: God through Inspiration
Penned By: Moses 
Date Penned: (1407 BC)
Overview: To Remind and Rededicate Israel to the Lord (c 1-34)
Theme: A Call for Commitment to God (c 29-30)
Message: Moses Restates God's Contrast (v 1-29)

Deuteronomy 29 Commentary

(29:1-29) A Promise to Israel - At Mount Sinai, 40 years earlier, God and Israel had made a covenant with each other (Exodus 19-20). Although the covenant had many parts (found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers), its purpose can be summed up in two sentences: God promised to bless the Israelites and make them the nation through whom the rest of the world could know him. In return, the Israelites promised to love and obey God in order to receive physical and spiritual blessings. Here Moses reviewed this covenant. God was still keeping his part of the bargain (and he always would), but the Israelites were already neglecting their part. Moses restated the covenant to warn the people that if they did not keep their part of the agreement, they would experience the consequences of breaking it and removing themselves from God's favor.

(29:5) God Takes Care of Us - Just as the people of Israel did not always notice God's care for them on their journey, we sometimes don't notice all the ways God takes care of us--that all our daily needs have been met and we have been well fed and well clothed. Worse yet, we mistakenly take the credit ourselves for being good providers instead of recognizing God's hand in the process.

(29:9) Seeking the Kingdom of God - What is the best way to prosper in life? For the Israelites, their first step was to keep their part of the covenant. They were to love God with all their hearts, souls, and might (6:4-5). We, too, are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matthew 6:33); then true success in life will follow as a blessing from the hand of God. 

(29:18) Choosing Evil -  Moses cautioned the Israelites not to choose to turn from God so that no root would be planted that would produce bitter fruit--gall and wormwood (see also Hebrews 12:15). When we decide to do what we know is wrong, we plant an evil seed that begins to grow out of control, eventually yielding a crop of sorrow and pain. But we can prevent those seeds of sin from taking root. If you have done something wrong, confess it to God and others immediately. If the seed never finds fertile soil, its bitter fruit will never ripen.

(29:29) Incomplete Revelation - There are some secrets God has chosen not to reveal to us, possibly for the following reasons: (1) Our finite minds cannot fully understand the infinite aspects of God's nature and the universe (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and (2) some things are unnecessary for us to know until we are more mature. Although God has not told us everything there is to know, he has told us all we need to know. Thus, disobedience comes from an act of the will, not a lack of knowledge. Through God's Word we know enough about him to be saved by faith and to serve him. We must not use the limitations of our knowledge as an excuse to reject his claim on our lives.

 

 


Dave Burnette's Life Application

A Commitment to Obey

Each day we walk through the Bible chapter by chapter making an application of our text to help us grow in the Lord. Many applications can be made from each day's text. Today we continue in the book of Deuteronomy with Chapter 29 and we enter into a new Address from Moses, his 3rd in this book, to this new generation of Israel. A Call for Commitment to God. After going over the principles and laws of in the previous chapter Moses reminds Israel of the contract that God had made with them to be a nation to which the rest of the world would know God. Moses reminds them of the contract that promised to obey and love God which to this point they have failed to honor. In making application we see that when we are saved we are adopted into this same contract with the Lord now being His People. It reminds me of the relationship I have with my kids of loving them while they love me and with this love comes a desire to obey and serve. It is a natural course of action. We too are to obey and Love the Lord while letting others know of our God by taking the Gospel into the 4 corners of the world. How about you? Do you see the contract entered when we become a child of the King? Let us learn from today's text and remembering our promises to the Lord. 

 

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Deuteronomy 29

Deuteronomy 29

 1These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

 2And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;

 3The great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:

 4Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

 5And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot.

 6Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink: that ye might know that I am the LORD your God.

 7And when ye came unto this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us unto battle, and we smote them:

 8And we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance unto the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasseh.

 9Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that ye may prosper in all that ye do.

 10Ye stand this day all of you before the LORD your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel,

 11Your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water:

 12That thou shouldest enter into covenant with the LORD thy God, and into his oath, which the LORD thy God maketh with thee this day:

 13That he may establish thee to day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto thee a God, as he hath said unto thee, and as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

 14Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;

 15But with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day:

 16(For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;

 17And ye have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them:)

 18Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;

 19And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst:

 20The LORD will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.

 21And the LORD shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law:

 22So that the generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the LORD hath laid upon it;

 23And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:

 24Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

 25Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:

 26For they went and served other gods, and worshipped them, gods whom they knew not, and whom he had not given unto them:

 27And the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book:

 28And the LORD rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

 29The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.