Deuteronomy Blessings & Curses June 29, 2016

Transcription

1 Transcription of 16ID1750 Deuteronomy Blessings & Curses June 29, 2016 All right. Let s open our Bibles tonight Deuteronomy 26. We ve got three chapters to cover. It won t take long. We are finished with the law, in terms of the moral law that we ve been looking at. We are getting to the end of the time that Moses has spent with the people there on the border. And tonight, we are just going to press ahead; three more weeks, I think, after tonight, and we will finish next communion with having a question-and-answer night, and communion as well, and we re going to have a brother come and share his testimony. And then we re going to start on Hebrews 11 because Joshua is all about faith. So before we jump into Joshua, I want to spend a few weeks with you looking at just the chapter Hebrews 11. But Moses is old now. He s 120. He s about to die. He s going to be buried on Mount Nebo. He has brought the children of Israel as far as he can. He can t go any further. He s been allowed to bring them to the borders of the land near Jericho. And, for six weeks (almost six weeks forty days), he gives this series of lectures that you have in your Bible known as the book of Deuteronomy. Secondgeneration bunch of folks. Their parents, twenty and over, had all died because they had refused, forty years earlier, when the Lord said, Let s go in, to go in. He does a lot of encouraging. It s almost like a cheerleading letter. Right? He wants the people to be sure that they do what God says. He reminds them of what not doing what God says will bring into your life. He uses examples and illustrations from their recent past, their long-ago past; even the past year that God has given these kinds of warriors, certainly sojourners, a lot of power and victory over all of the tribes who were on the eastern side of the Jordan. So they had been defeated. But the words tonight are pretty simple. We re going to look at chapters 26, 27 and 28, and Moses dying words to this people that he loved for so long are just, Look, you can be blessed, or you can be cursed. And it s kind of cut-and-dried; it s black and white. There s a line that s drawn. You can have blessing or blasting from the Lord. You re going to get one or the other. And you have to choose for yourself what do you want from Him? 1

2 So, we ve talked to you about covenants, and I want to just remind you quickly about them. There are a lot of different covenants in the Bible. The word itself means to have an agreement or a deal or to have a pact that s agreed to by both parties. Sometimes a covenant is made just from one side; a promise is made from one side. God makes some unconditional covenants. He made one with Abraham. He said, The land that I m going to give you is yours forever. So, unconditional. To Moses, He said, You can have the land as long as you re obedient. If you re not obedient, I m going to take you out of the land, and you re going to suffer as a result. But Abraham says, Oh, you ll get back in, but you may suffer the consequence, for years, of not being in that place God wants for you. So there are unconditional and conditional covenants. Think of Syrian captivity or Babylonian captivity. Those were as a result of a conditional covenant. Think of May 14, God brought Israel back. That s unconditional. And I suspect, from everything I know from the Bible, they re not leaving. They ll be there from now on. So Moses, tonight, speaks of curses and blessings and deciding to disobey His Word or to follow it. It s just that simple. So we ll get to those blessings in chapter 28 and the end of chapter 27. But let s start in verse 1 of chapter 26 tonight, and Moses continues. He said this, And it shall be, when you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you possess it and dwell in it, that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground, which you shall bring from your land that the LORD your God is giving you, and put it in a basket and go to the place where the LORD your God chooses to make His name abide. And you shall go to the one who is priest in those days, and say to him, I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the country which the LORD swore to our fathers to give us. Now, here s a command that couldn t have been carried out yet, certainly. But the command was when you get into the land and begin to farm the land, when the fruit begins to grow, take some of the firstfruits of the land that you ve been given as an inheritance, and go and declare your dependence upon God and His faithfulness. Take that offering to the priests, wherever God puts His name (He would, for a long time, put His name in Shiloh; He won t be going to Jerusalem first), where that place of worship was. And God told them that they should go and acknowledge that they re in the land. This fruit came from the land that God promised to give us. It s an interesting picture, and it s a principle found throughout the Scriptures that, before you re allowed to be a consumer, you have to be a consecrator, or, if you will, a worshipper. You have to acknowledge God s 2

3 provision before you can really enjoy God s provision. And so that was a practice that God established; and with very specific words, notice in verse 3, acknowledging that God had done as He had sworn to them to do, that These are the fruits I m offering to God in the land of promise. We got here by grace and mercy. God has been faithful. Then the priest, verse 4, shall take the basket out of your hand and set it down before the altar of the LORD your God. And you shall answer and say before the LORD your God: My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. Then we cried out to the LORD God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and looked on our affliction and our labor and our oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O LORD, have given me. Then you shall set it before the LORD your God, and worship before the LORD your God. So you shall rejoice in every good thing which the LORD your God has given to you and your house, you and the Levite and the stranger who is among you. So, big practice. But all to say what? God has been faithful. Right? I m thankful that God has brought me this far. You know, true worship begins with acknowledging who God is, what He has done, the joy of receiving His blessings. But to seek to enjoy His blessings without Him being in focus won t last. So, worship, and God demands this of the people, proceeded from a heart that was preoccupied with God s goodness. Right? You and I have been greatly blessed. Don t you agree? We have far more than 90% of the world. I know you don t feel like that, and you watch the news, and you think, Gosh, we re being so set apart and set aside. But travel! Just go somewhere. You ll come home much more thankful than maybe you are now. You have such blessing from God. He s provided so much. And the prayer that they are asked to pray is really a testimony of the individual experience with God. You ve brought me here. I was living out there. I came from bondage. I think, as Debbie (Pastor Jack s wife gave her testimony before tonight s message) was talking, that if you don t have a testimony, work on yours. Write it out. A couple of sentences. If somebody asks about your relationship with the Lord, you can kind of just lay it out; or you can go like this, Hold on. I ve written that out. And you can read it to them. But you re ready. Right? You re ready to give an answer. And make sure He gets glorified. Sometimes you hear these testimonies. 3

4 It s like a bragamony, not a testimony, about how bad people were. And they go, Oh, then I got saved. No. Turn that around. Don t tell too much of your junk life. Tell about the good things that God has done so that people will be thirsty to hear. Well then he says, in verse 12, When you have finished laying aside all the tithe of your increase in the third year the year of tithing and have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your gates and be filled, then you shall say before the LORD your God: I have removed the holy tithe from my house, and also have given them to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all Your commandments which You have commanded me; I have not transgressed Your commandments, nor have I forgotten them. I have not eaten any of it when in mourning, nor have I removed any of it for an unclean use, nor given any of it for the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the LORD my God, and have done according to all that You have commanded me. Look down from Your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless Your people Israel and the land which You have given us, just as You swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey. So, first things first. Firstfruits God, thank You for bringing us here. We stand where You promised to take us. Second of all, in the third year, God designated a special giving specifically for the poor, for the widow, for the priest, for the stranger, so that they wouldn t lack either. You ve been blessed. Now use what God has given you to bless someone else. You acknowledge God s goodness to you. You give Him the firstfruits of His blessing upon you, and then you become a blessing to others. That s the way God works. It is always that way with God. He works within your life to work through your life. He gets to you so He can go through you. And it is certainly the case here. Our Christian walk comes up short if we stop with what God can do for me. What will God do for me? No. He wants you to be a vessel through whom He can work. Kind of like getting saved. He wants to save you, but then He wants to use you to tell others how they can be saved. So then you re called to share the good news, not just sit upon that truth. If you re in Christ, you re a new creation; everything s made new (2 Corinthians 5:17), and then it says you ve been called to reconcile others to the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:20). So, notice the prayer, here in verses 13-15, in that third year of that special giving for those who are in tremendous need. He says, Lord, I ve removed the holy tithe," holy meaning it belongs to God, from my house. I ve not eaten it while in mourning. I haven t used it for some unclean purpose. I haven t put it on the grave 4

5 of the dead. All that to say I ve left it for You. It isn t I m digging into something that belongs to You because there re needs that have come up. This belongs to You. And so, God, I ve saved it for the poor, for the widow, for those to whom You ve said that we should give it. Now, verse 15, God, bless us. In other words, faithfully handling God s blessing will bring even more to you to be faithful with. But digging into what really doesn t belong to you - and that s the understanding if you don t put God first in this area, you can be frustrated in everything else. So, Thank You, Lord. Bless, Lord. Use what we ve given You. Pour out a blessing, like Malachi 3:10 says. Bless now through the obedience of the people to the Lord to use what He has given them freely to be benevolent towards others. And then God, verse 15, might bless again. I remember reading somewhere the sentence that says the more you short-change God, the shorter your change becomes. And I think that s right. I think that s a biblical truth. You want to be the vessel through whom God works. You don t want to be plugged up, where you re holding on to everything, because God ll just find another vessel. Verse 16, he then says, This day the LORD your God commands you to observe these statutes and judgments; therefore you shall be careful to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have proclaimed the LORD to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will obey His voice. Also today the LORD has proclaimed you to be His special people, just as He promised you, that you should keep all His commandments, and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made, in praise, in name, and in honor, and that you may be a holy people to the LORD your God, just as He has spoken. This was a big day the day they would go in and dedicate themselves, if you will, to the Lord. So, Today you ve proclaimed the Lord to be your God. Today the Lord has proclaimed you to be His special people. He s your God, you re His people. So, His promise is sure. Make sure your promise is sure as well. Now imagine, before we read here in chapter 27, 2½ million people sitting on the edge of the land of Moab. I should probably try to bring you a picture, and we probably have some from our Israel trips, on the plateau that sits above the Jordan River on the Jordan side, on the east side of the Jordan. You can see, on a clear day, Jericho in the distance. You can see the Dead Sea. It is 1300, almost, feet below sea level to the south. To the north, you can literally see all the way to the border. On a good day, you can see the whole land. The land is filled with limestone. I mean, it would shimmer in the sunlight. In fact, if you go to Israel 5

6 today and look to build a house, you ve got to cover it with limestone. That s the rule. It has to all look the same. It just has to be veneer, but it has to be limestone. And there was certainly plenty of it there, in those days. So people just propped up on a plateau that, looking down, you d see the River, you d see Jericho, you d see the Dead Sea, you d see Mount Hermon to the north. You could literally see that. And in certain places not so much in Jericho, it might be too far in the land, you could go and see all the way to the Mediterranean. That s how narrow Israel is at some points. So, sitting there, we then read in verse 1, Now Moses, with the elders of Israel, commanded the people saying: Keep all the commandments which I command you today. And it shall be, on the day when you cross over the Jordan to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, that you shall set up for yourselves large stones, and whitewash them with lime. You shall write on them all the words of this law, when you have crossed over, that you may enter the land which the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD God of your fathers promised you. Therefore it shall be, when you have crossed over the Jordan, that on Mount Ebal you shall set up these stones, which I command you today, and you shall whitewash them with lime. And there you shall build an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones; you shall not use an iron tool on them. So, when they went into the land (and again, these are directions for just a couple of weeks down the road, forty days of lectures for Moses, thirty days of grieving for his death = seventy days in all, ten full weeks from the time they arrived at the end of the book of Numbers, if you will), they were to publish and sanction what appears to be the moral law or, if you will, the Ten Commandments. You would write them on a whole stone, white-washed, so that, on Mount Ebal (one of two mountains, it s a couple thousand feet, it s almost just kind of a big hill), you could see them prominently displayed. I mean, the essence of the Ten Commandments is reflected in every kind of law that you find both ceremonially, if you will, and as far as governmentally is concerned, civil law. So how much they wrote beyond the Ten Commandments, I don t know. How much you can fit on a rock or two, I don t know. I know you can t put the whole book of Leviticus on there. So we suspect it s just the Ten Commandments. But it was sufficient for the people to remember that they were there being governed by God s Law. The action was like the offering in many senses symbolic to the fact that they were in the land that God had given them; these are His rules. So, We are here under His auspices. The rule of life was His Law, His ways, and it was a connection between their possession and their God. Right? Those stones with the law on them became the connection 6

7 between God s provision and God s people. God brought us here. God provided this. We are God s people. This is God s Law. If you look at a map, Mount Ebal is located roughly at the geographical center of Israel. So that s kind of interesting; between the Mediterranean and the Jordan (from west to east), between Dan and Beersheba (from north to south). It s in Samaria on the map today, if you look. It s just above the city of Shechem, to the north. Shechem is called Nablus today. Maybe you ve heard that on the news. It isn t in Israeli control. It s a PLO-controlled city. Unfortunately we can t take you there. We can go by it and kind of, It s over there. But it is situated across from another hill Mount Gerizim on the south, and between them is a valley called the Valley of Shechem. So God really wants this law to be placed centrally, in the midst of the country. This is Mine. You re Mine. These are My rules, and this is where I want you to put them. Notice also in verse 5 that, along with the stones bearing the Law, they were to build an altar. This is really the first altar that they were going to be building nationally, at Mount Ebal, and it was to be an altar of plain stone, notice, no carving, no tooling upon it. We just got back from Europe, and there are a lot of beautiful in fact, if you ve been to Europe, every city, at least in Germany and Switzerland and France, Holland for that matter, has a cathedral at the center of town. All roads lead to the church, right, literally in every European city. And whatever it s called, it s in the middle of town. Now most of these churches are extremely empty. They re ornate. They have gargoyles. They ve got Hercules next to Jesus next to Mary. It s beautifully done. It s just ridiculous, though. And nobody goes. And people go, Look how beautiful this is! And then I read my Bible, and the Lord said, I want an altar. Don t carve anything. Just put some dirt up. Just put some stones, one upon another. And I thought to myself, as we were traveling through some of these cities, I wonder what the Lord thinks about some of these expensive ornate churches that were built to His glory. I personally think He d hate them. And if you look at them, I don t think you d necessarily like them. You d marvel at them, but that s about it. God s not interested in the building. He s interested in your heart. And He s interested in your devotion, not the architecture. He s interested in a life that s devoted to Him, not stones that are carved well. I mean, God s a very different Person than the world would set Him out to be. In fact, I don t know if you remember back in Exodus 20, it s been a while since we ve been there the Lord said, as He was talking to them, If you re going to build Me an altar of stone, don t etch on the stone, or you ve profaned it. 7

8 Don t make people go up on steps to the altar so that the nakedness of the priests is not exposed. And then I ll bless you. The issue was, I don t want anything where you re meeting to take away from the glory for which you re there, which is Me. You don t want people walking around going, Man, this is a beautiful place! You want people walking around going, That is a great God we serve! He wants all the glory. That makes sense. Right? So you certainly want a place to meet that is comfortable and it meets needs, and it doesn t distract from worship. But God doesn t want the building competing with worship. He s worth worshipping. And so whenever you find Him saying, Here s where I want to be worshipped, you ll find it s the most simple, kind of unassuming place, and it isn t a place that people would put on the tour. But it is a place that God would honor. So He says, When you show up, and you put the Law out there in the middle of the country, make sure that, when you come, you just build the altar without an iron tool being laid upon it. In fact, verse 6, You shall build with whole stones the altar of the LORD your God, and offer burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God. You shall offer peace offerings, and shall eat there, and rejoice before the LORD your God. Right? You can rejoice before Him there. And you shall write very plainly on the stones all the words of this law. Then Moses and the priests, the Levites, spoke to all Israel, saying, Take heed and listen, O Israel: This day you have become the people of the LORD your God. Therefore you shall obey the voice of the LORD your God, and observe His commandments and His statutes which I command you today. In other words, do it! The burnt offering, if you remember (I know it s been a while since we ve been through those), is the offering of consecration. Whatever you brought, it got completely consumed in the fire. It all belonged to God. It was burned up, if you will. Peace offerings were communion offerings, where God got a portion, you got a portion; but you were obligated to eat your portion in God s presence as the smoke rose from your offering to Him. It was like having dinner with the Lord, having a barbecue with God. Right? It spoke of having fellowship with Him eaten by the worshipper who, notice verse 7, should be there rejoicing before the LORD your God. This is the day that s going to mark your entry into the land as God s people. I love the fact God longs for worship, and verse 7 says He wants you to rejoice. Isn t that good to know God wants you to rejoice? I see some people singing like this, (disinterested/bored expression and tone) The Lord is good, the Lord is good.. and nobody s buyin it. He is good, and you have good reason to rejoice. 8

9 Well, before this took place and all of these things, Moses commanded the people on the same day, verse 11, saying, These shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people, when you have crossed over the Jordan: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin; and these shall stand on Mount Ebal to curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. And the Levites shall speak with a loud voice and say to all the men of Israel. So, before they were to go in and do all of these things, the priests were now to stand on Mount Gerizim and read aloud what we will read here in the rest of the chapter twelve woes out loud. Can you imagine the acoustics being so good in places that so many people could hear it? But it works. If you go to Beth Shean in Israel or to Caesarea or to the Herodian, you can literally put 50,000 people in front of you and just talk on a normal level, and they will hear every word. We have Gerard sometimes sing for our group in Israel, and we re way away we re five times the length of our sanctuary away and he s just playing really quietly, and you can hear every word. So, it must have been a pretty cool place to sit. And so these are the twelve woes to come upon them to teach the people. And notice with each one, they were to yell out, Amen! which means we agree, so be it, that s right, high five, the Lord s right. Verse 14, And the Levites shall speak with a loud voice and say to all the men of Israel: Cursed is the one who makes a carved or molded image, an abomination to the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret. And all the people shall answer and say, (congregation says) Amen! There you go. You guys have your part. Cursed is the one who treats his father or his mother with contempt. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor s landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who makes the blind to wander off the road. I can t imagine. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who lies with his father s wife, because he has uncovered his father s bed. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who lies with any kind of animal. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who lies with his mother-in-law. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who attacks his neighbor secretly. And all the people shall say, Amen! Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen! And finally, Cursed is the one who does not confirm all the words of this law by observing them. And all the people 9

10 shall say, Amen! The last verse is a catchall, right? Like any of these other ones, Hey, cursed are you if you didn t do all of these! So there you go. Well, we now come to the blessing chapter. It s a long one, and we ll get through it in plenty of time. But there are fourteen verses of blessing, including three where Moses relates these promises as conditional to obedience. He just says, God wants to bless you, but it only comes if you ll obey the Lord. It then is followed by fifty-four verses of curses for disobedience. And you read that, and you say to yourself, Well, that kind of seems out of balance. But I guess people do much more disobeying than obeying, and God doesn t want you to get lost, so He kind of warns of every misstep. God s good, He s merciful, He s holy, He s longsuffering. He s also just. So verse 1 says, Now it shall come to pass if, and there s the operative word. And it literally does mean if. 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. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, I love that, because you obey the voice of the LORD your God. The operative word is if. Blessings overtake you. That means you re going one way, and the blessings just catch up from behind. Right? You re not blessed enough. How I wish I could convince people that doing things God s way will bring life and joy and peace and blessing. Oh, you can t, because everyone thinks they ve got it figured out, but this is what God has to say. Now, it would naturally follow that if you do the opposite you violate, you ignore, you put off, you disobey God s Word that, instead of the blessings overtake you, the blasting will overtake you. And the consequences of your choices are almost built in to the choice. Right? It just kind of follows you around. It catches up, and it takes you over. So often we find people giving lip service to the Bible, God s Word. Oh, yeah, we believe the Bible. But they don t do it, they don t buy it. They say it. And if there s a frustration to being a pastor, it s people that smile to your face and then walk away from God. It s frustrating because there s no life to be found there. And you know it, and I think they know it, but they do it anyway. So, I don t know how much more blessed you could get than your blessings overtake you. But here s what the Lord says, verse 3, Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go 10

11 out. Everywhere you turn, blessing awaits the faithful one who, according to verse 1, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God. Verse 7, 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. The LORD will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you. The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you. And the LORD will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them. So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them. Conditional, right? Verse 9 - if; verse 13 - if..if, if. And then verse 15 starts with the word but. But. Here re the if s and now the but. But (now you re going to be the tail, not the head) it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. Now, these are just the exact opposite of the first fourteen, right? Either God s blessings chase you down, or His cursings bring you back. Is that a good promise? God will either overwhelm you with blessings or take you down to cursings so that He might, in hopes of bringing you back to your senses. Verse 20, The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. The LORD will make 11

12 the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess. The LORD will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish. And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron. The LORD will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. Now, 800 years down the road from what we re reading, the nation that had so neglected the Lord found the Babylonians coming in and absolutely taking them out. Tons of folks died. Many were put in prisons. They were all led away, hundreds of miles away, for seventy years; kept in a place that God put them so that they might learn not to turn to other gods but to turn to Him. So Moses, without knowing as much, certainly, was prophesying of what would happen. Here re the blessings. And you can find blessed years in Israel s history; especially in Judah, some of the kings and all brought great blessings. But, more often than not, it was this trouble. Verse 20 it talks about destroying and perishing. It s not annihilation. It literally means to overthrow and to flee. The two words are shamat and abad. It literally means you re overwhelmed, and then you re chased away. The destroy and perish maybe give you the wrong idea. Verse 26, Your carcasses shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one shall frighten them away. How powerless are we when we set God aside? The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed. The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you. It s pretty terrible. None of these are memory verses, by the way. (Laughing) You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her; you shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its grapes. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be violently taken away from before you, and shall not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all day long; and there shall be no strength in your hand. A nation whom you have not known shall eat the fruit 12

13 of your land and the produce of your labor, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually. So you shall be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see. The LORD will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. The LORD will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods wood and stone. And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the LORD will drive you. Pretty tough stuff. But I m hoping that if you re sitting on the fence there, getting ready to go in, that you re going, I m memorizing them blessing verses. I don t want any part of this. You know, if the Lord lays it out, you say, Well, that s kind of cruel. Yeah, but He told you. Don t go there. You ll get hurt. Don t go there. You ll die. Don t go there. You ll be mistreated and overwhelmed. Don t go there. And prophecy is only history in advance. Right? And God can prophesy through His people because God knows the future. But Zedekiah was the last king of Judah (2 Kings 25), and he tried to escape when the Babylonians came. And he was kind of a vassal king; he wasn t a very godly man. But he ran to Jericho, to this place that they re sitting right across from. And then they grabbed him, and they brought him down the road to a place called Riblah, where the enemy (the Babylonians) killed his sons before his eyes, and then they put out his eyes. It s the last thing you see. And then you read here, verse 34, You shall be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see, and you go, Man, that s exactly what took place years down the road. God knew they would one day have to have an earthly king. Notice what He says here in verse 36, The LORD will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which you didn t know. One day they wanted an earthly king. It s years down the road. But notice what He says in verse 37. This nation that was chosen by Him, with such privilege and blessing, can become either a tremendous witness or a byword. The word byword or proverb, in this sense, means an object of ridicule. I think maybe the NIV (New International Version of the Bible) talks about it being an object of scorn. But that s exactly what happened. It came to them this way because they decided that they didn t want to follow the Lord. Look, God made a new covenant today with man. He sends His Son, Jesus, to die. He says He s the only way to heaven. He s the only name given among man whereby you can be saved (Acts 4:12). If you believe in Him, you ll be blessed. You ll have glory, man. Your life will be awesome. You write Him off, look out for the boils and the terror and the byword and your life that just kind of comes and goes, and you 13

14 become the object of scorn because you ve rejected the one way of life. Same thing here. Same thing here. Verse 39 says, You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. Now you re fighting with God. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off. You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity. Locusts shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land. The alien who is among you (the foreigner, if you will) shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. You ll be overrun. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, and here s the reason, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. That s the kicker, right? That s the summary verse. And I would think if you heard this from Moses, who had to be the most revered person in Jewish history maybe still is to this day, the guy they look to more than anything else, and 2½ million people go, Yeah, whatever, Moses. Can you get back to those blessings? And they never took this to heart. And I would suggest to you that there are a lot of Christians today who read their Bible, read what God has said not to do and to do, and they don t take it to heart. They just kind of play around the edges. Right? Play around the fringes. We want the blessings. We don t want the warnings. And we hope if we get warnings, they won t happen to us. Verse 46, And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything Isn t that a powerful Scripture? God has given you so much, and you still can t serve Him with joy. You still can t be moved. It sounds like the U.S. today, doesn t it, in many ways. Righteousness exalts a nation, (Proverbs 14:34). So, God always rules in the affairs of men. If a nation will establish itself dependent upon God and follow His ways, blessing will follow. You read America s history. There was a time when our leaders were writing, America, America, God shed His grace on you and putting In God We Trust on our money, not In Our Money We Trust. But that s kind of days gone by, isn t it? We re still enjoying the benefits of faithful forefathers, but we re losing them quickly, and here s why. I m not trying to compare us with Israel. Israel is God s chosen people. They re very unique in their relationship. 14

15 But the principles, I don t think, can change. So, in our prosperity, we find ourselves slipping away. We have the benefits of His blessings, but now we have a Supreme Court and a government that don t believe God should play any part in the national consciousness of man. And you can have that, but you d better read the rest of the chapter then because you re getting everything else, too, and it isn t going to be good for us. You know, there might be a reason you don t see America in end-time prophecy. Maybe we just don t exist by then. You don t know. But I ll tell you what we d better be praying for our nation, and a lot. Humanists, whose god is materialism, want to silence the cries of the few to keep God on the throne. So we ll keep Him out of school, and we ll take the nativity scenes down, and the Ten Commandments, and we ll replace them with abortion-rights rallies and homosexual marriage and all manner of sin. And then we ll go, Oh, God, where s God?? Oh, He s still there. He wrote this whole chapter. You should read the whole thing. And what do we get as a result? We become precarious. We begin to deteriorate. And most world governments, over the years, have fallen apart from within. The curses begin - rampant disease, insurmountable social problems, weak international, falling apart from the inside out, moral fabric tearing at our culture. So, from strength in God to weakness without Him, God has warned us. May we listen to His warning. The children of Israel did not. God is still faithful. All it takes is one word from Him, eh? And maybe the church should do more praying and less worrying. Verse 47 says, Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you. The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young. And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you. They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the LORD your God has given you. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you. Literally fulfilled, by 15

16 the way, in 2 Kings 6 and Lamentations 2. Today, a new era has begun for the nation of Israel. For the first time since 70 A.D., God has brought them into their homeland. Now, we ve read about all the going and coming. But now they find themselves in the land. There s probably no, I think, people group in the world that has suffered more than the Jews, or longer. Today the land is being prepared for God s final dealings with them as a nation with the world in rebellion. It s one of those unconditional promises. But here s the problem with man apart from God. Oh, God is going to be faithful, but look how man has been so unfaithful and how much he has suffered as a result. Verse 54 says, The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind, so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all our gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter, her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates. If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD, then the LORD will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues great and prolonged plagues and serious and prolonged sicknesses. Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. Why does that happen? Because they had kosher laws and they go, Oh, we ll just eat like everybody else. Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in this Book of the Law, will the LORD bring upon you until you are destroyed. You shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven in multitude, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. And it shall be, that just as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess. Then the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known wood and stone. And among those nations you shall find no rest, nor shall the sole of your foot have a resting place; but there the LORD will give you a trembling heart, failing eyes, and anguish of 16

17 soul. Your life shall hang in doubt before you; you shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life. In the morning you shall say, Oh, that it were evening! And at evening you shall say, Oh, that it were morning! because of the fear which terrifies your heart, and because of the sight which your eyes see. And the LORD will take you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you, You shall never see it again. And there you shall be offered for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you. Boy, it s miserable, isn t it? We re going to stop reading. I can t take it anymore. (Laughing) Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life (Psalm 23:6), or surely misery and grief will follow me. So, are you willing to obey? I don t want any part of the rest of these chapters, for sure. Submitted by Maureen Dickson July 6,