Deut. 5-- That it may be well with you

Scripture: Deuteronomy 5 (especially verses 28-33)

Moses is still transitioning from retelling Israel's history in the wilderness to reissuing God's Law to them to prepare them to enter the promised land. In the first half of the chapter, he goes over "the Ten Commandments," and in the second he recounts their initial response to the Ten and God's response to their response. (There are a lot of responses happening. If I didn't sense that my readership for this blog is of an older generation, I'd make a joke here about response-ception.)


Here's what God says to Moses, as rendered in The Message paraphrase:

"What I wouldn’t give if they’d always feel this way, continuing to revere me and always keep all my commands; they’d have a good life forever, they and their children!" (5:29)

Moses passes this along to Israel with these words (again in The Message):

So be very careful to act exactly as God commands you. Don’t veer off to the right or the left. Walk straight down the road God commands so that you’ll have a good life and live a long time in the land that you’re about to possess. (5:33)


Here's what I think God has been teaching me in this chapter: obedience to God improves our quality of life not just because of a divine reward/punishment program (though in Israel's case there is a great deal of blessing/cursing that happens), but because God, in His wisdom, knows and commands what is best for us.

Just as a parent knows much more about life and wisdom than a toddler (or, for that matter, a teenager), and just as a parent may make rules for a child that the child finds bizarre, unfair, oppressive, confusing, or downright cruel, so God is a parent to us, His unruly teenagers. We may buck against His commands however we want, but they are inherently good and lead to goodness in our lives:

• It is good to honor parents and elders, and our lives will be better if we do
• It is bad to commit adultery, and our lives will be worse if we do
• Etc., etc.-- murder, lying, envy...

Living our lives well naturally makes our lives better. The best way to live is the way that God wants us to live. Even if we feel like "He's soooo unfair" and "like, the worst parent ever," He knows what's best for us more than we do.