Enemies and Promises.

If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.
The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven. (NIV)


If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.
The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! (NLT)


Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.
The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. (NKJV)

Deuteronomy 28:1,7

I love the verses that have promises in them. I love that ever though this in the Old Testament, I can take these promises for myself. This talk about obeying God and his commands, following the laws of Moses, but do we have to follow the laws of Moses? As New Testament Christians, not exactly. Jesus came to set us free from the law, but he did tell us that we have 2 commands we need to follow: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:37,39). If you are doing these 2 things and obeying God, the promise in verse 7 is yours. I recently got a side-by-side Bible and it has been exciting to be in the word because I can see the small differences. Verse 7 is a great example of this. NIV says will grant, NKJV says will cause, but NLT says will conquer. However great these words are my favorite word is right before will. This si the one doing the action, which makes the word even better. Do you see it? It's Lord. The Lord will conquer. Not me, mainly because I'm not good enough to do the conquering. Personally though when someone like the Lord is on my side, I don't need to be good enough. He does a better job when I don't meddle, so I'll leave the conquering of my enemies to Him. I really love the end of this verse too. They will flee in seven ways. God is good. Even though verse 7 is great and exciting, lets not forget verse 1, and that we must do our part first, we must obey.