Day 25: Listen, Listening

In connection with the choice or decision we have dealt with in the previous days, the one between life and death, I quoted the words of Moses to Israel in Deuteronomy 30, verses 15–19. We will read them again because they contain not only the choice between life and death, but the choice between blessing and cursing. This is what Moses said to Israel:

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply [Notice, the choice is to live.]: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. [With life goes blessing.] But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish [that’s death], and ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, wither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. [And then Moses ends with this solemn invocation:] I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

We have already seen that the choice we make affects our descendents, not only “thou,” but its “thou and thy seed may live.” I pointed out, too, that there are two pairs of opposites which Moses set before Israel. One is life and death, the other is blessing and curse. We are now going to speak about the second half of that pair, the choice between blessing and curse. For the full implications of this choice, we need to turn back to Deuteronomy, chapter 28. Now, this is a remarkable chapter. It’s a long chapter—it contains 68 verses—and its theme is blessings and curses. The first fourteen verses are devoted to blessings, the remaining 54 verses are devoted to curses. By the time you’ve read through that chapter, you have some idea of what are blessings and what are curses.

Let’s see, first of all, about the blessings. In the first two verses of Deuteronomy 28, this is what the Lord says:

“And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God [the Hebrew says, ‘If thou shalt listen listening.’ It emphasizes listening.], to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall comeon thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.”

So there’s the way to the blessing. It’s “listen listening” to God’s voice and then doing what He says. That’s a decision. You can decide to listen or you can decide not to listen; you can decide to do what He says or you can decide not to do it. But remember, it’s a decision. Blessings are the results of right decisions.