Deuteronomy 28 – Verses 1 – 14 describe the blessings of obedience to God’s law. It would be natural to think that this is the Gospel. Blessings due to obedience is definitely good news, but obedience is still the law. Let me explain. Whenever our standing before God depends on something we do, it will eventually fail. We are incapable of maintaining that standing consistently, and will eventually fall short in our part of the bargain. So while obeying God’s law definitely does have benefits, obedience can’t get us into favor with God and the ultimate reward of heaven. Obedience will bring us natural benefits of behaving in a way that’s consistent with God’s will, but it was only the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ – all the way to the cross – that covers over our many disobediences and opens the door to eternal life.
Verses 15 – 68: When I was in the seminary, I was taught that good news should always dominate. When I’m preparing a sermon, for example, I should spend 40% of my time on sharing the Law (our sin and need for a Savior) and 60% of my time on the Gospel (the good news that God sent Jesus as the Savior of our sin and what that means for our lives, both now and eternally). In this chapter though, Moses’ ratio is more like 75/25 the other direction. The obedience of Israel was so critically important, and their tendency to wander so well established, that Moses felt constrained to go into great detail about what would happen to them if they were not faithful in God’s will. Moses words turned out to be prophetic, as a strange nation of strange speech did overtake them (the Assyrians and Babylonians), mothers and fathers did resort to cannibalism when Jerusalem was besieged (this is detailed in the book of Lamentations) and the people did go to Egypt to offer themselves as servants to the Egyptians (this is found in the book of Jeremiah) just to name a few. Moses was obviously hoping to help the Israelites avoid that fate. Perhaps his words did make many of them sit up and take notice and hold off those necessary disciplines of God a few years at least.
Verse 21 mentions Asherah, a goddess connected to the Canaanites in the Bible – a mother goddess, or, in other words, a fertility deity. Wikipedia.com describes Asherah as a “Semitic” mother goddess, which I find confusing, because those worshipping this goddess were the Canaanites, the descendents of Noah’s son Ham, not Shem, where we get the term Semitic. Growing trees would often become places of worship to Asherah, and/poles would be set up in her honor.
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