Scripture Daily

Context No. 1392 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 4:25-40: in context

25When you father children and children’s children, and you have been long in the land, and then corrupt yourselves, and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the LORD your God’s sight to provoke him to anger, 26I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed. 27The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will lead you away. 28There you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29But from there you shall seek the LORD your God, and you will find him when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30When you are in oppression, and all these things have come on you, in the latter days you shall return to the LORD your God and listen to his voice. 31For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which he swore to them. 32For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and from the one end of the sky to the other, whether there has been anything as great as this thing is, or has been heard like it? 33Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as you have heard, and live? 34Or has God tried to go and take a nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 35It was shown to you so that you might know that the LORD is God. There is no one else besides him. 36Out of heaven he made you to hear his voice, that he might instruct you. On earth he made you to see his great fire; and you heard his words out of the middle of the fire. 37Because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their offspring after them, and brought you out with his presence, with his great power, out of Egypt; 38to drive out nations from before you greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today. 39Know therefore today, and take it to heart, that the LORD himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no one else. 40You shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God gives you for all time.

Moses warns Israel that if, after long settlement in the land, they corrupt themselves with idols, they will be scattered among the nations, few in number, serving lifeless gods of wood and stone. But then, into that dark prospect, he speaks a promise: from there, from the place of exile and consequence, you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and soul. For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon you or forget the covenant he swore to your fathers. And Moses reminds them of the greatness of what God has done, that they might know the LORD is God, and there is no other.

The promise shining in the middle of this warning is that God can be found, even from the far country of exile and failure: you will seek the LORD and find him, if you search with all your heart. Moses is describing a people who have failed badly, corrupted themselves, been scattered in judgment, reduced and serving idols in a foreign land, about as far from God as they could get, and by their own fault. And even to them, even there, the promise holds: seek him with your whole heart and you will find him. There is no place so distant, no failure so complete, that a wholehearted return cannot find God waiting. That is the mercy Moses names outright: the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not forsake you. The door of return is never bolted from his side. But notice the condition, which is not a harsh one but a searching one: with all your heart and all your soul. God is found by the wholehearted seeker, not the half-hearted one who keeps one foot in the far country. The promise is not that a casual, divided search will do, but that a whole-hearted turning, even from the depths of exile, even after the worst failure, will find the merciful God who never forgot his covenant. However far we have gone, the way back is to seek him with the whole heart, and the promise is that we will find him.

However far I have gone from God through my own failure, do I believe his promise that a wholehearted search will find him, and am I seeking him with all my heart, or with the divided heart that keeps one foot in the far country?

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