Deuteronomy 32:47 They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
Everyone of us has known someone whose words just couldn’t be trusted. The lies that they spew form a highway paved with selfish evasions and obfuscations. Soon you just dismiss them, not just their words, but as people. Anyone with that many lies must be just a paper facade.
Idle words, words that have no energy behind them to accomplish their intent, abound in our world. We often complain about politicians words being empty. We know their campaigns are filled with promises they know they can’t keep. The are just words to sway voters.
But politicians are the only ones with empty words. Most of us at times speak with empty words. We speak the politenesses on those occasions, when we would really like to let them have it. We recognize that it issn’t the time nor the place to let them know what we think, so we bite our proverbial tongue, and plaster over what really needs to be said.
We often call this kind of plastic facade being politically correct or being polite. But it doesn’t change the fact that there are other words that need to be said that we are hiding. And that hiding does serve a purpose; it helps keep the fabric of society intact.
For Moses, his final words to the people he has led, the people for whom he has been wiling to trade his life, are being spoken and written. Both blessing for obedience and curse for rebellion have been outlined. They have been read over the leaders and the people. They have even written a song to help them remember.
Moses knows the words he has received from the LORD matter. They carry weight and importance. They are not to be ignored. Ignoring them would bring the curses, and he doesn’t want the LORD’s people to be under the curse of God.
So Moses tells them these words are not idle words. These words have the power to change people and the course of history. And they did change the course. If you know the history of Middle East, you know how Israel’s rebellion led to wars, exiles, forced labor, war atrocities that went on for many centuries. Remember the Crusades?
If only the Israelites had broken their pattern of rebellion, the pattern endlessly repeated in the Hebrew Scriptures. God’s people rebelled against the good intensions of the LORD. He had good for them. They choose evil.
But if they had chosen obedience, they would have experienced a very different quality of life. They would have had long life in the Promised Land. But instead, their time in the Land was marked by periods of obedience followed by longer periods of rebellion and the resulting lifting of the LORD’s protection from their lives.
But we have this same cycle evident in our world today, even in our lives. When we listen to HIs voice, things go much better by far than if we ignore Him. That is because His Word still has life. It is still powerful. It still changes things.
But too many in our day and age claim Christ as Lord, but then aren’t regarding His Word as a life-giving entity. They have a “take it or leave it” attitude. And I hate to say it, their lives become frayed around the edges.
We have a choice. We can heed the words of Deuteronomy in our text. We can see His Word as life-giving and apply ourselves to learning and obeying their message. We can place ourselves under the shield of His protection. I say we give it a try for the next hundred years or so!
The Arnold Journey 