Message: In Deuteronomy 32 God had told Moses to teach the Israelites a song that he wanted them to learn and pass through their generations. God knew that they would continue in their rebellion when they reached the promised land and this song would be a prophetic story used as a testimony against themselves in their rebellion. Something that caught my attention as I read the words of this prophetic song was that when the Lord gave the inheritance to all of the tribes of Israel he carefully divided them according to number and size and he divided the human race. Israel was God’s own inheritance and even after all of his care and protection he knew they would reject him as soon as they received all of the blessings from the promised land. Not only would they reject him but they would credit all of the prosperity and blessings to the foreign gods. It’s actually worse than that though because verse 17 says that they would sacrifice to demons. This means they didn’t just credit a fake and imaginary god. They were actually tricked by satan to worship him for all of the care and blessings that God gave them. This would be the ultimate insult to God and provoke jealousy by getting his chosen, promised prize to turn from him and even worse to worship satan. The song prophetically shows not only their rebellion, but it also shows how God would hide his face from them and become known to an “inferior people” to invoke jealousy on his chosen people. The inferior people are the gentiles and most of us are in Christ because of this turn. The prophetic song also shows that he chose not to blot them out and destroy them because of his own reputation. He was not willing to allow satan any credit for their failure. The footnotes in my bible also cross reference Romans 10 where Paul referred back to this scripture to confirm that when the Jews see the favor and the hand of God on the gentiles they will be awakened to their disobedience and finally see their Messiah in the Jesus. Although this is definitely a picture of us as nations, I believe it also represents us individually. God is jealous over our worship and our affections. He has cared for and provided for us and all credit belongs to him.
