Gentle rain on tender grass

If you read Deuteronomy 32.1-43 you find the message of the whole book drawn together in poetic form.

Poetry conveys reality in a way that stirs our emotions and warms our hearts. Truth is set on fire in song.

No wonder Paul exhorts believers to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as we exhort each other (Colossians 3.16). This song of Moses was to be memorised and repeated, to live ‘unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring’ (31.21).

We may wonder to what sort of tune this song would have been set. The greater part of it is very dark, calling, in our terms, for a minor key. Modern choruses select the more ‘cheerful’ verses (verses 3 and 4) and lift them out of their grim context.

I will proclaim the name of the LORD,
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.
They have acted corruptly towards him;
to their shame they are no longer his children,
but a warped and crooked generation.
Is this the way you repay the LORD,
O foolish and unwise people? (NIV)

God’s faithfulness

Yet this song can only be understood as a seamless whole. The golden theme is the faithfulness of God. The dark theme is the faithlessness of his people. They are warp and woof: remove the one, and the other makes no sense. The staggering nature of the grace of God only sparkles in full glory when displayed against the background of his graceless people. If his people only sing of his goodness, they will forget the evil of their own hearts, their tendency to backslide, and they will fall away even more quickly. They must sing of God’s mercy. They must also sing of their own sin.

Moses called on all creation to listen to this song of the covenant (verse 1). He then called on the people to listen to the Word of God. Grass needs regular rainfall, not just the occasional torrent. And so it is with us. Saying, ‘I don’t have time to study the Bible each day’ is saying, effectively, ‘I don’t want to listen to the voice of God’. God does speak powerfully when we hear the Word preached: it can be like a torrent, drenching our spiritual lives.

But ‘gentle rain on tender grass’ (verse 2) is continual, steady, non-dramatic and refreshing. It is a lovely picture of steady, persevering study of the Word of God. Easy as it is to replace Scripture intake with devotional books and hymns, or to fill our quiet times with prayer, there is no substitute for exposing ourselves daily to God’s own infallible, authoritative Word.

Praise

Moses then called the people to praise. We naturally praise those things or people we admire or love; but God is far above them all, the One who created all. The best way to stir ourselves to praise him passionately, is to remember all the wonderful things he has done. So Moses reminded the people of God’s tender and loving acts (verses 10-14), as well as his mighty acts (verse 8).

What is the natural reaction of the human heart to the goodness of God? In verse 15 we find out. Jeshurun (literally ‘the upright one’) is God’s ‘pet name’ for Israel. But when God showers love on him, he takes it for granted, demands more, and ‘kicks against’ God. What a picture of our own hearts! Plenty and prosperity should lead us to wholehearted praise of God the giver. All too often, we demand more. And so we need to sing of our own sin. We remember that without divine aid our inclination is to rebel. We need to remind ourselves that our righteous and upright God must judge sin, and that we are in terrible danger if we wilfully backslide.

Warning

The main part of this song is a solemn warning. The Old Testament is the outworking of this song. The people constantly rebelled against God. Their judgement was inevitable. But against this dark backdrop, the glory of the coming of a Saviour shone all the more brightly. Judgement is not the end of the story. God will show mercy for the glory of his own name (verse 27). At the last day, God will finally bring about the judgement against evil conveyed in this Song.

But he will also have a people for himself, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. We will sing the Song of Moses, rejoicing in God’s uprightness, and confessing our own sinfulness and rebellion. We will also sing the Song of the Lamb, celebrating the only way in which that justice could be reconciled with our rebellion (Revelation 15.3).
And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. (Revelation 15.3).

The above is one of the devotions from Sharon James’s forthcoming book, Gentle Rain on Tender Grass: Daily Readings from the Pentateuch (Evangelical Press, £8.95, ISBN 0 85234 630 1). The first five books of the Bible are foundational to understanding the story of salvation as taught in the rest of the Bible, but they are often neglected. They are only fully appreciated as the light of the gospel shines onto them; hence there are numerous New Testament cross references.

At the end of each devotion there is a ‘verse to take into the day’. Passive reading can be unhelpful (it is so easy to forget the morning reading by coffee time). A key to retaining the Word is meditation: after reading, to focus on one verse, really think about it, pray through it, and take it into the day, recalling it and thinking about it further in ‘spare’ moments (it can help to note it down on a piece of paper and carry it around).

There are 123 devotions in all, the narrative sections covered more quickly, and some sections (for example, the Ten Commandments) treated verse by verse.

Gentle rain on tender grass

God’s faithfulness

Praise

Warning

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