God knows everything that happens before it happens. That has to be true, or there’s no way that God could tell the prophets about the future. That’s how Isaiah and Jeremiah could predict the fall of Jerusalem, and that’s how both of them knew things about Jesus hundreds of years before He was born.

But if that’s true, today’s passage raises an interesting question – why would God choose to bless His people, knowing that they would be unfaithful to Him? In Deuteronomy 31:16, God clearly predicted the way His people would turn their backs on Him. He said that His people would start worshipping foreign gods, and as a result, He would abandon them to their pagan enemies (Deuteronomy 31:17). And all that came to pass, as the Book of Judges so clearly describes.

So, if God knew His people would betray Him, why did He go to so much trouble to save them? Why did He bring them out of Egypt by sending so many plagues among the Egyptians (Deuteronomy 29:2-3)? Why did God defeat Sihon and Og, the kings on the eastern side of the Jordan River (Deuteronomy 29:7; 31:4)? Why was God determined to bless His people with wealth if He knew they would shift their focus from the Giver to the gifts, and then give the credit for their prosperity to false gods (Deuteronomy 31:20)?

For the same reason that Jesus washed the feet of all of His disciples, including Judas, on the night He was betrayed (John 13:5). For the same reason that Jesus told all His disciples that they would abandon Him, and that Peter would deny Him three times, and yet went to the cross for them anyway (Mark 14:27-30). Because a covenant is an unconditional promise, a promise made regardless of how much the beloved deserves it, a gracious promise that flows out of a permanent relationship that cannot be broken.

Yes, God told His people over and over that they were to love Him (Deuteronomy 30:6, 16, 20). But the fact that God would make a covenant with unworthy sinners like them – like us – proves that He loves us before He ever asks us to love Him (I John 4:19). Let us rest and rejoice in God’s love today.

Deuteronomy 31:16-22 (ESV)

16 And the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them. 17 Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured. And many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ 18 And I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil that they have done, because they have turned to other gods.

19 “Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel. 20 For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant. 21 And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.” 22 So Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the people of Israel.