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Deuteronomy 32:1-43 – Praying through the Bible #62 – A Prayer that is a Honest Song
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I want to be as perfectly honest as this song reveals. I prefer the naïve hope of “I’ll Never Forsake My Lord” which promises “Though the tempter in efforts bold, Or in subtly as of old, Should essay to allure my soul – I’ll never forsake the Lord.” I prefer the kinship of Peter who promised “I will never deny You!” (Mt 26.35), echoed in “I’ll Be A Friend to Jesus.” It begins with “They tried my Lord and Savior” – which is when Peter was outside denying his Lord – and concludes by pledging, “I’ll be a friend to Jesus, My life for Him I’ll spend; I’ll be a friend to Jesus, Until my years shall end.” I wonder how many have sung those songs meaningfully, but forgot their full meaning and forsook their Lord, their friend?
The 2nd song of Moses (Dt 32.1-43) is brutally honest, poetically reverent, historically accurate, prophetically truthful, and anchored by amazing grace. This praying song haunts the aware soul because it warns an unfaithful past can predict an unfaithful and forsaking future, where salvation comes only by God’s consistent character.
“Verse 1” (32.1-5) calls heaven and earth as witnesses declaring “The Rock – His work is perfect; and His ways are entirely just, A faithful God, without prejudice, He is right and true.” This perfection of God is both a warning and our only hope. “Verse 2” (32.5-9) decries that God’s children “are not His children” and begs them to recall “Isn’t He your Father and Creator.” “Verse 3” (32.10-14) recalls Israel’s pitiful beginning; afterwards which God “guarded him as the pupil of His eye” and “hovers over His young.” Then God feeds His inheritance with “honey from a rock.” “Verse 4” (32.15-18) reverses back to Israel’s abandonment and provocation of God by their sacrifices to demons. How depressing that they “forgot the God who bought you forth.” “Verses 5-7” (32.19-22; 23-25; 26-33) describes God’s vengeance, arrows, hunger, pestilence, plague, and where He “will unleash on them wild beasts with fangs.” More retaliation follows, tempered only by God’s desire to be honored. “Verse 7” glimmers hope: “The LORD will indeed vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants when He sees that their strength is gone and no one is left — slave or free.” “Verse 8” concludes God “will purity His land and His people” (32.43). God purifies through both vengeance and mercy.
Isaac Watts wrote in “Alas! and Did My Saviour Bleed,” “Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” Was its brutal honesty the cause of change to the less insulting, “for such a one as I?” I cannot imagine congregationally singing Moses’ second song. But neither do I want to lie when I sing “I’ll Never Forsake My Lord.” What is not naïve is that my only hope against myself, my past and my future, is God’s honor, faithfulness, mercy and grace. That is one song I love to sing and hope to sing eternally.
Prayer Challenge: Pray that we pay close attention to the words we sing, and not so quickly forget them once a new song is sung. Pray for honesty in confessing in song.
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