15 But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all his commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you. 16-19 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed. Your offspring will be cursed, and your land’s produce, the young of your herds, and the new born of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. 20 The Lord will send against you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning me.

21-26 The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until he has exterminated you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat, drought, blight, and mildew; these will pursue you until you perish. The sky above you will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your land into falling dust; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed.  The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will march out against them from one direction but flee from them in seven directions. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses will be food for all the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth, with no one to scare them away. Deuteronomy 28:15-26 Christian Standard Bible

Should we read the hard parts of the Bible like this one? Some chapters in the Bible, like the Old Testament book called Numbers, are full of of long lists of peoples names. For example, a list of all the duties different people were to do in the service of the Tabernacle, the central place of worship when Israel was in the wilderness. And then there are chapters like the one we are now in which speak of the awful judgements God sends upon disobedient rebels. From vs 15 all the way to vs 68 Moses tells of terrible and bitter things that would happen to Israel if they rejected God and His good plans for them. And because they are so bitter- the temptation is to skip over them. Let me suggest a few reasons why we shouldn’t do that.

Firstly, because every word God spoke through the people He used to give His message to the Jews, and to all mankind, is trustworthy and true. Not just the 'nice bits' – the hard bits too. His severe warnings are for our good just as much as His kind promises. Secondly, the bitter things spoken of in the Bible are no worse than events we see in the news every day. As I was writing this the news was full of the terrible things the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan. God's word is realistic. It doesn't look at life through rose-tinted spectacles. Thirdly, when we read parts like these terrible things that would come upon Israel if they rejected God – we can then understand why they eventually suffered as they did when the Babylonians destroyed their cities in 586BC. And fourthly, we need to read the bitter things that follow wilful and sinful rebellion to realize that when Jesus spoke of hell, it is something to take seriously.

Some people who read a section like today's one accuse God of being vindictive and cruel. But we need to remember that God speaks of these thing as consequences. Why would the Israelites experience the bitter plagues and defeats that Moses warned them of? (vs 15 and vs 20)

It would be because, as the apostle Paul said of pagan nations, that “although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images  made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.” (Romans 1:21-23) In vs 18 of that same chapter Paul says “that's why the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”

God is not someone sinful like us. And we are not His equal that we can choose to do our thing. He is someone of perfect and pure holiness. Terrible rebellion will therefore always lead to bitter repercussions. Fortunately we will go through this chapter in smaller portions and only once a week! But as we do, don't skip over these things. Paul the apostle said: “These things happened to them as examples for us - and were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.” (1 Corinthians 10:11)