Key verse: Deuteronomy 30:19
Big idea: God's covenant can bring blessing or curse.
When I was teaching high school, occasionally a student would ask when they were going to use Pre-Calculus in their real lives. I had a serious answer (math is really about teaching you to think logically and solve problems, people who study math learn to think more precisely in dealing with a wide variety of situations) and a flippant answer for when they were not being sincere. My flippant answer was "Well, if you don't pass this class, you won't graduate high school. If you don't graduate High School, it will be hard to get a job. If you don't have a job, you won't have money for a shower. No shower, no friends. Therefore no Pre-Cal means no friends."
Obviously, I was teasing the students that seemed to be looking for an excuse not to do their work, rather than really trying to understand the use of what we were studying. I did that by stringing a pretty ridiculous string of loosely connected consequences together. Sometimes consequences are somewhat arbitrary, like a speeding ticket. There is no direct consequence between financial loss and speeding, without stringing some elaborate farce together. A crash is a natural consequence of speeding: it is the reasonable outcome of your behavior.
As Moses concluded his farewell address to the people, he explained that they had two paths to choose: death or life. They could live like those around them, worshipping those dead gods and ultimately sharing in their death. Or they could worship the Living God, the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and share in those things. Death was not some arbitrary consequence for sin, like a fine. It was the inevitable outcome of rejecting the One who is life. God is consistent and reliable. The difference in receiving life or death, blessing or curse, is not some inconsistency in God. It is just the natural outcome of the way we respond to Him. Do we follow faith and obedience or idolatry and rebellion? The choice is ours.
Discussion idea: Read Romans 10:5-10. How does the choice of life or death match up with the situation presented by Moses?
Prayer focus: Praise God for His faithful holiness, His mercy, and the freedom He gives us to choose life.