The Choice (Deuteronomy 11)

Did God expect Israel to choose between two ways? Were they to bear the fruit of obedience, love and service to God to be blessed in the land? Are we to bear fruit? Let’s look at Deuteronomy 11.

What did Moses preach to Israel about their relationship with God?

The Lord is your God, so you must always love him and obey his laws and teachings. Remember, he corrected you and not your children. You are the ones who saw the Lord use his great power when he worked miracles in Egypt, making terrible things happen to the king and all his people. And when the Egyptian army chased you in their chariots, you saw the Lord drown them and their horses in the Red Sea. Egypt still suffers from that defeat! (Deuteronomy 11:1-4 CEV)

What else did Israel experience of God’s mighty hand in the wilderness?

and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel. For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did. (Deuteronomy 11:5-7 ESV)

How is the land of Israel very different to Egypt, their former residence?

Keep every command I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to cross into and possess the land you are to inherit, and so that you may live long in the land the Lord swore to your fathers to give them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. For the land you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated by hand as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are entering to possess is a land of mountains and valleys, watered by rain from the sky. It is a land the Lord your God cares for. He is always watching over it from the beginning to the end of the year. (Deuteronomy 11:8-12 HCSB)

Was it a land that would only produce if they carefully observed the Lord’s commands?

If you carefully observe the commands that I’m giving you today—that is, to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and soul— then he will send rain on the land in its season (the early and latter rains) and you’ll gather grain, new wine, and oil. He will provide grass in the fields for your livestock, and you’ll eat and be satisfied. Be careful! Otherwise, your hearts will deceive you and you will turn away to serve other gods and worship them. The wrath of God will burn against you so that he will restrain the heavens and it won’t rain. The ground won’t yield its produce and you’ll be swiftly destroyed from the good land that the Lord is about to give you. (Deuteronomy 11:13-17 ISV)

How could they be sure that they and their children were obedient to God?

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21 KJV)

What blessings would flow from God to an obedient nation?

For if you are careful to keep this entire commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all His ways, and to cling to Him, then Yahweh will dispossess all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours; your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon, and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea. No man will be able to stand before you; Yahweh your God will put the dread of you and the fear of you on all the land on which you set foot, as He has spoken to you. (Deuteronomy 11:22-25 LSB)

Did they have a free will choice between two end results?