Read Deuteronomy 29:2–21
Questions from the Scripture text: Who called whom (Deuteronomy 29:2)? What had they seen (Deuteronomy 29:2-3)? But what had YHWH not given them (Deuteronomy 29:4)? What has YHWH done (Deuteronomy 29:5)? What hasn’t happened? And why haven’t they had bread or wine (Deuteronomy 29:6)? Whom did they conquer (Deuteronomy 29:7)? What did they do with their land (Deuteronomy 29:8)? Now, what must they do (Deuteronomy 29:9)? Before whom are they standing (Deuteronomy 29:10)? Who are standing (Deuteronomy 29:11)? To do what (Deuteronomy 29:12)? So that God may do what (Deuteronomy 29:13)? And be what to them? In accordance with what? What is YHWH cutting with them (Deuteronomy 29:14)? And with whom else (Deuteronomy 29:15)? What had they seen in Egypt (Deuteronomy 29:16-17)? Now what must there not be among them (Deuteronomy 29:18)? What mustn’t a man think he can be blessed to follow (Deuteronomy 29:19)? What will YHWH not do with the one who follows the dictates of his own heart (Deuteronomy 29:20)? What will burn against such a man? What will settle on him? What will YHWH blot out? Unto what will YHWH separate him (Deuteronomy 29:21)? From whom? According to what?
How can we be blessed in covenant with God? Deuteronomy 29:2–21 looks forward to the hearing of God’s Word, publicly read, in the holy assembly on the coming Lord’s Day. In these twenty verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that branches of the church are blessed by God, when they walk with Him, but that for anyone to walk with God and be blessed forever, he needs God to give him new life and union with Christ through faith.
Our passage is really in three sections, establishing this covenant between YHWH God and Israel. First, there is the recounting of the benefits that the Lord has already given them (Deuteronomy 29:2-9), and then there are the parties between whom the covenant is established (Deuteronomy 29:10-15), and then there is the duty and warning if they break the covenant (Deuteronomy 29:16-21). They have already received covenant benefits: deliverance and avenging (Deuteronomy 29:2-3), sustaining and leading (Deuteronomy 29:5-6), and then strengthening them and giving victory (Deuteronomy 29:7-8). Now, in the administration under Christ, we gain , remembering that our spiritual benefits in Him Already, all material prospering comes in the love that gave Him to us, but our spiritual blessings in Him also obtain eternal material benefits in the new heavens and new earth.
This underlines to us the necessity of the new birth. Israel, generally, had not been given new hearts, eyes, and ears (Deuteronomy 29:4). This spiritual condition continues today (cf. Romans 11:8); new birth is given to God’s elect (Deuteronomy 29:7). If you want to remain in the church forever, you must be united to Christ by faith, justified, and sanctified. There are many who are excommunicated at the point of their death because they were never justified, and they were never sanctified, so their souls were not glorified at the point of their death. Yet they remained church members. It is a dreadful thing.
It is a mercy when these spiritually dead are excommunicated in life because their unconverted state is exposed by their conduct and the church’s discipline. Believers receive earthly blessings as an earnest, looking forward to the new heavens and the new earth and perfect material blessing forever. But the greater blessing is growing up into the Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, with whom you will inherit. So what we need to seek from God is not just that He would give us the blessings of being members of His church in this world, but that He would give us new hearts, new eyes, and new ears, so that we would be covenantally blessed, in and with Christ, forever.
Then, in Deuteronomy 29:10-16, we see the parties of the covenant: with whom is it being made? It is with everyone from top to bottom.: leaders, elders, officers, men, wives, children, strangers, servants, woodcutters, and water drawers. So everyone in Israel was a member of the covenant, and everyone was obligated by this covenant ceremony. The covenant ceremony is a little bit hidden in Deuteronomy 29:12, Deuteronomy 29:14 in the NKJ, because the verbs are not translated literally. But "that you may enter into the covenant" is literally "that you may pass through the covenant." And at the end of Deuteronomy 29:12, "YHWH your God makes," and at the beginning of Deuteronomy 29:14, "I make this covenant,” use the verb “cut”: “YHWH your God cuts,” and “I cut this covenant." It is a reference back to Genesis 15:9–21, with the cutting of the animals, and the two appearances of God passing through between them.
This covenanting is not just with all those who are standing today, from the leaders down to those who draw water (Deuteronomy 29:10-11), but it is also with future generations (Deuteronomy 29:14-15). God's covenant administrations, in which He administers the covenant with His church on earth, includes the children (cf. Matthew 27:25 and Acts 2:23, Acts 2:36–39).
And so the God’s administrations of His covenant, in the visible church throughout history, is always not just with you and your children (because they are part of your household), but it is established as multi-generational, for successive generations. He is God to them and to their children.
This brings us to the final section (Deuteronomy 29:16-21) which emphasize how dreadful it is to turn away from His words, because turning away from His words is turning away from having him as God to us. It is turning away from being covenant people to him. The worst part of every sin is that it is a form of idolatry. And therefore, one of the most dreadful sins is the sin of idolatry. The essence of idolatry is “following the dictates of our own heart.” To do so is to reject the Lord from being our God. Those spiritually dead and dry ones who do this (roots of bitterness, Deuteronomy 29:18), cannot expect to be blessed with the spiritually alive and moist ones (Deuteronomy 29:19—more literally translated).
Whatever happens with a branch of the visible church, those who have life in themselves from God will be saved. But, even if a branch of the visible church is covenantally blessed, any within it who are still spiritually dead will be cursed and condemned. We see this in the letters in Revelation 2–3, where even to churches that are going to lose their lampstand, there is still "Him who overcomes" and "Him who has ears to hear." And that harkens back to this chapter and this passage, "Him to whom God has given hearts to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:4).
So even in those churches that will be disciplined and become no church at all, yet the one who is regenerated, who has ears to hear from God by grace, and therefore who overcomes, that one will be saved. That one will have fellowship with Christ. That one will have their salvation and their blessedness in Christ sealed unto them. And so just as this corporate covenanting ceremony started with everyone recognizing that each of us individually deserves God's wrath and curse (cf. Deuteronomy 27:14–26), this corporate ceremony ends with this proclamation that the individual who fails to have, from God by grace, a heart to perceive, eyes to see, ears to hear (Deuteronomy 29:4, Deuteronomy 29:19), that one will be cursed; YHWH will not spare him. “The anger of Yahweh and his jealousy will burn against that man” (Deuteronomy 29:20), and that means forever. He will be separated from God's church (Deuteronomy 29:21) forever, not just in the excommunication-way that can happen during your life. Notice that verse 21 comes after his name is blotted out from under heaven (Deuteronomy 29:20).
So God uses the blessedness or cursedness of His church, in the administrations of the covenant of grace in the history of the church, to hold before us the necessity of the new birth, the necessity of regeneration, of believing into Christ—of walking with God from the life of Christ within us. These covenantal chastenings, of particular branches of the visible church, publish to us the danger of being left in our sins, left in the dead condition in which we came into this world: hearts that don't perceive, eyes that don't see, ears that don't hear. The danger of hearts that are still stone towards God and not tender and listening to Him, the danger of not being joined to the Lord Jesus Christ through faith, so that we may be blessed with Him forever.
What material blessings do you enjoy? What spiritual blessings do you enjoy? How do these obtain full and forever material blessing? What use are you making of your church membership? How is your church conducting itself in covenant with God?
Sample prayer: Lord, we confess that we have sometimes allowed ourselves to feel safe, merely because we are members of the church. But Your dealings with Your church have taught us that we need from You new life: new hearts, new eyes, new ears. Apart from these, we turn from Your words. And, whenever we follow the dictates of our own heart, we are truly rejecting You from being our God. So, help us, by Your life-giving Spirit. And forgive and cleanse us by the blood of Your Son. From His own righteousness, make us to live righteously, we ask in His Name, AMEN!
Suggested songs: ARP32AB “What Blessedness” or TPH51C “God, Be Merciful to Me”
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