Deuteronomy 28:9 The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways.
Recently I was in a little shopping mall, an old factory in our area that has been restored to be an upscale shopping area. They have cool coffee and donut shops and other things. There is a store I would call a quip store. It has postcards with pithy sayings, old books of pithy sayings, and so on. One of these saying was found on a kitchen towel, “I love Jesus, but I drink a little.” Now, we might differ on whether alcohol is ever permissible. If you think it is sometimes permissible and your heart and attitude are to serve the Lord Jesus and honor Him, then I think it might be better said, “I love Jesus, so I only drink a little.”
I happen to disagree with that, but that is not the point. The point is the attitude that little saying seems to project. “I love Jesus, but I drink a little,” as if we can pat Him on the head and are indifferent about Him. “You know, Jesus is okay. He keeps me respectable in this community. I love Jesus, but I do what I want to do.” It is supposed to be clever. It is a cool, Christian indifference.
Indifference means no special like or dislike for something. It means no difference. Someone asks you, “Do you want to go out to eat today? Where do you want to eat?” You answer, “Doesn’t matter to me, no difference.” You don’t love it; you don’t hate it. Some things we are indifferent about. Now, this is horrible because maybe you are a Cleveland Browns fan. I don’t have anything against the Cleveland Browns per se, but that is the point. Do you hate the Cleveland Browns? How can you love the Browns? The Browns are brown, neutral, vanilla. No one hates the Browns. Do you love the Browns? You might, but if you do, you are in a very select group. Most people tend to be indifferent about the Browns or indifferent about football altogether.
Well, God is not indifferent about you. God loves you. God cares. God will restore you. God will correct you if you belong to Him. God is not indifferent toward you. Deuteronomy 28, a long chapter of sixty-eight verses, is about blessing and cursing. The Bible says in Deuteronomy that we are to love God and live for Him. Those are not two different things. Living for God does not excuse me from not loving Him, and loving Him does not mean I don’t have to live for Him. They go hand and hand.
Deuteronomy 28:1 says, “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth.” For fifteen verses he talks about the wonderful blessings that God would give, but it is an if/then proposition. From verse 15 to verse 68, there is a long list of curses for God’s own people if they don’t listen to Him, love Him, and follow Him.
Let me give you just a sample. If they did not listen to and follow God, Deuteronomy 28:27 says that “the LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.” I didn’t look all these things up, so I don’t know what they are exactly, but they can’t be good. Verse 28 continues, “The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday…” God is not indifferent to His people. A God who loves you enough to free them from Egypt is holy enough to correct them.
In fact, verse 27 says that if they rebelled against God, He would smite them with the plagues of Egypt, and in verse 68 He says He would send them back to Egypt. In short, He says, “If you are not going to serve Me, then you are going to serve other gods and be taken by the people who love those gods.” A person who will not obey the God that loves Him will serve the God that hates Him. That is exactly what God was saying.
I remember hearing a peer recounting a story from when he was a young man. There were a group of friends one Friday night who wanted to go do something. They asked among themselves, “Hey, can you go out and do thus and so on Friday night.” They all agreed, but one friend specifically asked another, “Does your dad mind if you go out with us on Friday night?” The boy said very contemptuously, “My dad doesn’t care what I do!” He wasn’t bragging. He wasn’t saying, “Hey, I can do whatever I want.” He was scornful. He was saying his dad didn’t care. He didn’t care enough to correct or encourage.
Friend, God does care. He cares when we do right. He cares when we do wrong. God is not a harmless God. God is a good God. That means God cares about what you do, the decisions you make, the places you go, the people you talk to, and how you talk to them. He cares about what you do, not because He is a graceless God, but because He is a gracious God. God is not indifferent to His people, and His people should not be indifferent to Him.