Thurs.’s Devo - The Blessings or the Curses

Read: Deuteronomy 291-30:20; Luke 11:37-12:7; Psalm 78:1-31; Proverbs 12:19-20 Moses stood before the people and reminded them of all they had seen God do for them and all the things he had done that they hadn’t even noticed. He had brought them through the wilderness for 40 years and their sandals and their clothes hadn’t worn out. God provided them food and caused them to defeat the King of Sihon and The King of Og. Despite all that, they did not have eyes to see, ears to hear or a heart to understand the things of God. *** God was giving them a covenant, including the curses and it would be for them and their generations to come. They and their future generations would be held accountable for everything God had revealed to them. *** When the day comes that they find themselves living in the curses because of their disobedience and idolatry, then they can turn to the Lord and obey him. God will forgive them and restore their fortunes to them. He will have mercy and bring them back to their land and make them more prosperous than their past generations. Then the Lord will put their curses on their enemies. *** That day, God was giving them the choice of the curses or the blessings, whether they chose to worship Him with all their hearts or if they were going to worship other gods of other nations. The key to life was choosing to love and obey the Lord. ***In Luke, Jesus was invited to eat at the house of one of the Pharisees. They noticed he didn’t go through the ritual hand-washing that they had devised. When asked about it he commented that they cared so much about the outer man but neglected cleaning up the heart. Their whole lives were hypocritical. The crushed the people with their laws which they couldn’t even keep. They made monuments of the prophets their ancestors killed. Their generation would be responsible for the death of every prophet that was killed from Abel to Zechariah because they rejected everything the prophets came to prepare them for which was Him. *** Jesus ended up with saying that everything they did in secret was one day be known to all. Then he turned to his friends and said that God wouldn’t forget one of them. They were so valuable to him that He had their hairs numbered. (I wonder if Jesus got invited back.) *** Lord, thank you for calling us friends. May we realize the importance of our lives to the next generations and live faithfully. We choose to live in your blessings.