Restoration After Repentance
30: 1-10
Restoration after repentance DIG: How does Isra’el come full circle in verse 1-3? What does it mean to return to ADONAI (see verses 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10)? What promises from God make this repentance possible (see verses 3, 5, 7, and 9)? How does verse 6 fit with 29:4? What in a “circumcised heart” enables one to see with spiritual understanding?
REFLECT: Has God ever restored you? How so? What does it mean for you to “return to the Lord?” How often do you “return?” Why? How has ADONAI changed your heart? Is there any area of your life where you need “heart surgery?” What can you do? What in these verses encourages you? Why? Who can you encourage this week?
A new heart would be an essential feature of the B’rit Chadashah, which will not be fulfilled for Isra’el as a nation until the return of Yeshua Messiah.
The day before Moses died.
So often in Scripture, the thundering voice of judgment is followed by the loving voice of hope. Unfortunately, Isra’el did commit spiritual adultery and follow after other gods, and Ha’Shem did bring on His people the curses stated in His covenant. No nation in history has suffered as much as the nation of Isra’el, and yet no nation has given so much spiritual wealth to the world. In this chapter, Moshe looked down through centuries and saw the future restoration of their Land and under the blessing of God.642
Restoration (30:1-3): After the dire curses of Chapter 28 and the compressed warnings of 29:22-28, this section comes like an oxygen mask to revive hope . . . God will not be defeated by Isra’el’s response, nor bound and imprisoned by the past. Now when all these things come upon you – the blessing and the curse that I have set before you – and you take them to heart in all the nations where ADONAI your God has banished you, and you return (Hebrew: shuwb, to return, or to turn back) to ADONAI your God and listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you today – you and your children – with all your heart and with all your soul, then ADONAI your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you, and He will return (Hebrew: shuwb) and gather you from all the peoples where ADONAI your God has scattered you (30:1-3).
Notice the language of God’s Word in this text that is spoken by the mouth of Moses! Moses does not say, “If you sin and God sends you out of your country into exile, and you receive the curses of the Torah upon yourself.” As a prophet of God, Moses says: When all these things come upon you. In other words, this is going to happen to you, you will sin and you will bring upon yourselves God’s curses, the curses of the Torah, and you will be scattered among the nations because you didn’t obey the LORD. Isra’el’s repentance would not obligate YHVH to act, but He chose to restore His people to a place of favor. He will turn from sending judgment on them to showing favor to them and to gathering them to the Land He promised them.643
To some extent the near historical gathering occurred after the Babylonian exile (see the commentary on Jeremiah, to see link click Gu – Seventy Years of Imperial Babylonian Rule), when a believing remnant returned to the Land and rebuilt the Temple (see the commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah As – Opposition to Rebuilding the Temple). But the far eschatological fulfillment of this promise will not take place until the Lord returns (see the commentary on Isaiah Kg – The Second Coming of Jesus Christ to Bozrah). But first, a spiritual “operation” must take place, the circumcision of their hearts so that they will receive their Messiah, love their Lord, and experience the spiritual life that He promised.644
Repentance (30:5-7): A new heart is an essential feature of the B’rit Chadashah (Ezeki’el 36:24-32), which will not be fulfilled for Isra’el as a nation until the return of Yeshua Messiah. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the heavens, from there ADONAI your God will gather you (see the commentary on Isaiah De – God Is My Salvation, I Will Trust and Not Be Afraid), and from there He will bring you. ADONAI your God will bring you into the Land that your fathers possessed, and you will possess all of it (see the commentary on Isaiah Kp – My Chosen People Will Inherit My Mountains); and He will do you good and multiply you more than your fathers. Also, ADONAI your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love ADONAI your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. ADONAI your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you (30:5-7). The total picture is quite different from the one we see in modern Isra’el, where there is little evidence of repentance and where great numbers of people are agnostic.
This is what is called progressive revelation: from Genesis (se the commentary on Genesis En – For Generations to Come Every Male Who is Eight Days Old Must be Circumcised), to here in Deuteronomy, to Jeremiah (see my commentary on Jeremiah (see the commentary on Jeremiah Eo – The Days are Coming, declares the LORD, When I Will Make a New Covenant with the People of Isra’el), and then to Colossians 2:1-3. In each step along the way God gives us more clarity about what it means to circumcise our hearts.
Reflection: How do 10:16 and 30:6 harmonize? How should one explain the “tension” between YHVH’s demand that Isra’el circumcise their hearts in 10:16, and His own promise to circumcise their hearts in 30:6? The emphasis is quite different in each context. In 10:26 the circumcision of the heart is a part of the appeal to obedience. It was something required of the people that they were capable of doing. Here in 30:6, however, it is seen to be an act of God, and therefore indicates the B’rit Chadashah, when the LORD would in His grace deal with mankind’s basic spiritual problem.645
Restoration (30:8-10): After making it clear that YHVH alone can remake Isra’el’s heart, Moshe returns to God’s expectations of His covenantal people. This message, however, was not just for some distant generation of Israelites. The emphatic pronoun that begins the next verse applies the need for covenantal renewal to Moses’ own audience as well.646 But as for you – you will return (Hebrew: shuwb) and listen to the voice of ADONAI and do all His mitzvot that I am commanding you today. The outcome of obedience is blessing. ADONAI your God will make you prosper in all the work of your hand – in the fruit of your womb, and the offspring of your livestock, and the produce of your soil – for good. The future blessing would still be contingent upon obedience, an obedience springing out of love for God in His continuing mercy and grace.647 For ADONAI will again rejoice over you for good, as He rejoiced over your fathers – when you listen to the voice of ADONAI your God, to keep His mitzvot and His statutes that are written in this scroll of the Torah, when you turn to ADONAI your God with all your heart and with all your soul (30:8-10). Repentance and obedience are necessary for everyone to come back to God.
Dear Loving Heavenly Father, How marvelous Your willingness to forgive and to restore! I worship You! Your merciful and gracious love is fantastic; but Your love is not a free ticket to do as we please. You are holy. You offer salvation to all who “believe.” For if you confess with your mouth that Yeshua is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart it is believed for righteousness, and with the mouth it is confessed for salvation (Romans 10:9-10). Repentance which results in obedience is how true love/belief is shown. Believing in one’s heart is an action belief. The mind may believe something is true, but do nothing about it; but when the heart believes – then the call to action is heard and is heeded.
If someone says to You a million times they love You, but go their own way – what good is it? But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror – – for once he looks at himself and goes away, he immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect Torah, the Torah that gives freedom, and continues in it, not becoming a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts – he shall be blessed in what he does (James 1:22-25).
Praise You for accepting our repentance when we turn back to You. Praise You that when Your child repents, You forgive even when the sin is as big as adultery and murder as in King David’s repentance and Your forgiveness of him. He said: Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is pardoned. Blessed is the one whose guilt ADONAI does not count, and in whose spirit there is no deceit (Psalms 32:1-2). You are a wonderful Father! In Your holy Son Yeshua’s name and the power of His resurrection. Amen
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