From today's reading, again all of which is review, one passage was pulled out in all three of my main resource books. In Deuteronomy 15:4, Moses states that there should be no poor among them because God would greatly bless them. However, the text goes on to give instructions for caring for the poor and even states in verse 15:11 that "there will always be some in the land who are poor". Why the apparent contradiction? Note that the first verse states that there should be no poor among them, which presupposes that the Israelites would live in accordance with God's holy decrees. If they obeyed and served only Him, He promised to bless them in such a way that poverty and infertility and war would be nonexistent. That was the conditional agreement, but God foreknew that Israel would not keep His decrees and would prostitute themselves to other gods, which would negate His promise of great blessing. Therefore, some poverty would exist, so God gave instructions to His people regarding the compassionate care and provision for the poor.
In my Bible study group today, we were discussing how much blessing we are surely missing out on by not keeping God's decrees as He asked. To be sure, none of us obey perfectly and never will, but taking the observance of the sabbath as an example, how many of us are in willful disobedience?! And to think of how He wants to bless us, as He wanted to bless the Israelites, but our own rebellion ties His hands. I mentioned in an earlier post a message I had heard regarding the tithe. According to this sermon, if all the Christians actually obeyed God in the tithe, hunger and poverty, with all their related social evils, would cease to exist! God wants to bless us, but our own poor choices prevent Him from doing so! Food for thought...
Tomorrrow's reading: Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9
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