Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. Deuteronomy 30:19
Nathan grew up in a Christ-believing household, but he started to stray from his childhood faith as a college student into things like drinking and partying. “God brought me back to Himself when I didn’t deserve it,” he said. In time, Nathan spent a summer sharing Jesus with strangers on the streets of major US cities, and is now completing a residency in youth ministry at his church. Nathan’s goal is to help young people avoid wasting time not living for Christ.
Like Nathan, the Israelite leader Moses had a heart for the next generation. Knowing he would soon relinquish leadership, Moses delivered God’s good regulations to the people and then lists the results of either obedience or disobedience: blessing and life for obedience, cursing and death for disobedience. “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live,” he told them, “for the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). Moses urged them to love God, “listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him” (v. 20).
Choosing sin brings consequences. But when we surrender our lives to God again, He’ll surely have mercy (vv. 2-3) and restore us (v. 4). This promise was fulfilled throughout the people of Israel’s history, but also by Jesus’ final work on the cross to bring us into fellowship with God. We too have a choice today and are free to choose life.
Deuteronomy 30:11-20
The Offer of Life or Death
11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
INSIGHT
1. In what area of your life is it most difficult to follow God’s way?
2. How can you encourage the next generation to choose life?
The generation that stood on the threshold of the promised land wasn’t present at Mount Sinai when the mountain shook and God called Israel to be His covenant people. The giving of the law, which showed how the Israelites were to relate to God and one another, had been given to an earlier generation (Exodus 19-20). So before entering the land, Moses repeated the law so that the new generation could likewise learn what God had revealed. That second giving of the law is the book of Deuteronomy, which means “second law.”
PRAYER
Dear Jesus, thank You for making a way to bring me back into fellowship with You. In Jesus name I pray and believe. Amen.
Read: Deuteronomy 30:11-20 | Bible in a Year: Ezekiel 1-2; Hebrews 11:1-19
