It’s easy to think that God’s Old Testament Law, given as it was to an agricultural people some 3500 years ago, doesn’t really apply to us – and the people who first heard Moses speak these words were tempted to have the same reaction. For remember – all the adults who witnessed God thundering His Ten Commandments from the top of Mt. Sinai had died in the wilderness. Those who were preparing to enter the Promised Land had only been children at that time, and some of the younger ones hadn’t even been born. They could have come to the conclusion that God’s covenant just didn’t apply to them.

And so they had a choice to make, just as we do. Like the generation that first came out of Egypt, we can respond to God’s covenant with willful defiance (verse 18). We can reject the Creator and set our affections on people or things that He has created (Romans 1:25). Like those who bowed down before a golden calf at the very foot of Mt. Sinai (Exodus 32), we can reject God’s perfect law of love, living only according to our own purposes and pleasures.

Of course, we can also break God’s covenant by presuming upon His gracious promises. Knowing that Jesus shed the Blood of the Covenant on behalf of all His people (Matthew 26:28), we can go on sinning while expecting Him to forgive us, no matter what we do (Romans 6:1). We can insist that we will have peace with God, regardless of our continual rebellion against Him (verse 19).

But there is another way, a way to escape the wrath of God that will come against all those who are openly defiant or complacently presumptuous (verse 20). For God hadn’t just made a covenant with the generation that had been slaves in Egypt. And He didn’t just make a covenant with those who were going into the Promised Land (verses 12). No, His covenant also extended to those who weren’t yet alive, to countless generations that hadn’t yet been born (verses 14-15) – even to people who are alive today, thousands of years after the days of Moses.

In fact, God’s covenant promises are given to all those who share the faith of Abraham (Romans 4:16), to all those who trust in Christ (Romans 4:23-25) – promises to make us His very own people, and to be our God (verse 13). So, why wouldn’t we want to receive such blessings? And why wouldn’t we want to respond to such grace with our obedience and love?

Deuteronomy 29:9-21 (NASB)

9 “So keep the words of this covenant to do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
10 “You stand today, all of you, before the LORD your God: your chiefs, your tribes, your elders and your officers, even all the men of Israel,
11 your little ones, your wives, and the alien who is within your camps, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,
12 that you may enter into the covenant with the LORD your God, and into His oath which the LORD your God is making with you today,
13 in order that He may establish you today as His people and that He may be your God, just as He spoke to you and as He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
14 “Now not with you alone am I making this covenant and this oath,
15 but both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the LORD our God and with those who are not with us here today
16 (for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed.
17 “Moreover, you have seen their abominations and their idols of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which they had with them);
18 lest there shall be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; lest there shall be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.
19 “And it shall be when he hears the words of this curse, that he will boast, saying, ‘I have peace though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart in order to destroy the watered land with the dry.’
20 “The LORD shall never be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will burn against that man, and every curse which is written in this book will rest on him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
21 “Then the LORD will single him out for adversity from all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant which are written in this book of the law.