Blessings for Obedience

Deuteronomy 28 and the Blessings and Cursings of the Covenant

With the Lord's help this morning, we will continue in our study in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 28. Deuteronomy, chapter 28. As we will be dealing with a difficult text of scripture, let us ask the Lord to give us his guidance and his blessing in our service today.

Let us pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, as we look to your law and as we look today to blessings and cursings, we would ask that you would once again impress upon us the importance of an understanding of all of your truth, how your truth relates to other aspects of your revelation.

Lord, that we would be a people who are properly grounded in your truth and able to express your truth to others around us. We ask that you be with us by your spirit during this time. We pray in Christ's name.

Amen. As those of you know who have been with us over the past, well, approximately two years now, we have been looking at God's law when I've had the opportunity of speaking and we looked at the Holiness Code in Leviticus 18, 19, and 20.

We have been in the book of Deuteronomy for a period of time and we've now come to the conclusion of that study, looking at the blessings and the cursings provided in the book of Deuteronomy chapters 27 and 28.

If you recall last week, we saw the laying out of the, basically, the conditions of the covenant. Today, you have become God's people and you had the public pronouncement by the Levitical priests of what the conditions of that covenant are, and specifically in regards to the diligent seeking to obey the commandments that Jehovah has given to his people.

That God says to his people, this is how you are to be my representatives. This is how you are to be those who testify that I am truly God amongst the nations. Over and over again, you have the exhortation, be diligent, be diligent to obey, be diligent to hear.

The priest read out, curses the man, and then you have a summary of aspects of the law. The people are to say, Amen. Yes, curse it as anyone who doesn't do this. This emphasizes the fact that God is making it very, very clear, very, very plain to his people what it is to be in covenant with him, and who he is, and how they are to reflect his being, and how serious this revelation is.

This is especially placed within the context of the gods of the nations around them, and that there is to be a clear differentiation between worshipers of the true God and worshipers of false gods. They are to be a peculiar people, and we saw how the very language that was used there in Deuteronomy chapter 27 is picked up and repeated by many of the New Testament writers, by Peter and by Paul.

We looked at those texts, and that clearly the New Testament Church saw that they were continuing in this line, that God was continuing to build his people, and to have his people. And now there is a special way in which the people of God understood the way in which these commandments were given in light of the cross of Jesus Christ.

But Deuteronomy chapter 28 is not an easy text, and as we look at it this morning, we will, it's a very long text, nearly 70 verses long, and in fact this evening, given the hymn-sing, we may barely have time just to read the second part, and given how difficult it is to speak on it, that may be good enough.

Get to the end of the verse, get to the end of the chapter, say amen, let's sing, and that may be the easiest, easiest way to deal with the cursings section of Deuteronomy chapter 28. But the reality is, when we look, we will see that only the first portion is about the blessings, and the cursings seem so long in comparison.

But maybe we can, by diligent thought, realize what's really going on here. Let's read in Deuteronomy chapter 28. Now it shall be, if you diligently obey Yahweh your God, being careful to do all his commandments, which I command you today, Yahweh your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

All these blessings will come upon you and, and overtake you if you obey Yahweh your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body, and the produce of your ground, and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock.

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 out. Yahweh shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you.

They will come out against you one way, and will flee before you seven ways. Yahweh will command the blessing upon you in your barns, and all that you put your hand to, and he will bless you in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.

Yahweh will establish you as a holy people to himself, as he swore to you, if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and walk in his ways. So all the peoples the earth will see that you are called by the name of Yahweh, and they will be afraid of you.

Yahweh will make you abound in prosperity, and the offspring of your body, and the offspring of your beasts, and the produce of your ground, in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers to give you.

Yahweh will open for you his good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land, and its season, and to bless all the work of your hand, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.

Yahweh will make you the head, and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath, if you listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, which I charge you today, to observe them carefully, and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

Amen. So here are the blessings, and they are, as you can see, bookended. Remember, bookends, I'm not sure if many people have bookends these days. Electronic books are becoming so prevalent that you just put your Kindle there, and you don't really have to worry too much about bookends.

But those of us who still like paper libraries, you can either have the cheap bookends that you buy over at Target or something like that for $1 .99. You can have the real nice ones, the horse head ones or things like that that are really nice.

But a bookend is a way of putting something at the beginning and the end, and it keeps everything together. And the blessings are bookended, as we would expect, by the commandment, diligently obey Yahweh your God, do all of his commandments.

What I command you today, and that is repeated at the end, do not go after other gods, do not engage in idolatry. So the blessings themselves are bookended with the repetitive commandment to obey, to be careful, to be diligent.

These are not things that you can be apathetic about. Once apathy begins to enter into the experience of the people of God, once it becomes something that's just a given, danger lies ahead. Because obedience that flows from an apathetic heart is mere tradition and habit.

It is not the kind of obedience that God desires. A non-passionate obedience is not the obedience that God was looking for. Now, of course, we know that, we even read in 1 Corinthians, we read of the necessity of the work of the Spirit of God.

A person needs to have a new heart. There needs to be that work of the circumcision of the heart, a new heart of stone taken out and a heart of flesh given, for there to be passion in the obedience of God's truth.

And we're already reading, as we read through Joshua, and as we'll move farther into Judges, we will see what happens. When a people are given an external law that is not joined with an internal change of heart, there will always be decadence, decay.

It can happen quickly, it can happen slowly, but it will always happen. And I think we must keep this in mind. Sometimes, just to give you an example, you have seen this if you've been in a good gospel preaching balanced church for many years at all.

What do I mean? Well, we have a recognition around here of the fact that we are called to raise our children in the admonition of the Lord. We are to instruct them in the ways of God. We are to call them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

And we are to have a curbing effect upon that young person. We are to discipline them. We are to say, this is what you will do and this is what you will not do. And we are to be diligent in making application of those things when they're under our roof and under our control.

But there are times, the people of God can testify to this over and over again, there are times when someone looked like maybe they were following along in that way, but then once they get out from underneath the control of mommy and daddy, all of a sudden, there is a throwing off, sometimes a violent throwing off of the fetters and the restraints that that godly influence had, because the unregenerate heart will eventually respond in rebellion.

That rebellion can be an open running to the things of the world, or it can take the form of religious rebellion. That is, I know what you've told me, but I'm going to rebel against what you've told me by embracing its negation, not necessarily atheism or something like that, but a false theology, a false teaching.

I'm going to rebel by grabbing hold of heresy, by joining another religion, showing my disdain for what has happened to me in my youth in that way. We must recognize that it has always been the case that there is a necessary work of the Spirit of God to bring about true obedience that is pleasing to God.

Obedience that comes merely from habit is not the obedience that God calls for when he wants that heartfelt love and obedience. Remember last week, we saw that phraseology in Deuteronomy chapter 27. If you will do these commandments, how?

With all your heart and soul. In the very same phraseology used of loving God, you are to do his commandments because they represent who he is. Only people who truly love their covenant God will obey in such a way as to show the kind of internal consistency that he is looking for.

And so, these blessings will come upon you. They will overtake you if you obey Yahweh your God, if you do so from the heart. Well, notice the first promise. God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

Well, what would that mean? Well, high above all the nations of the earth in being the apple of his eye, in experiencing his blessing, in being protected from the might and power of other nations, their land would be protected by God, that God would continue his blessings upon them.

This is the first promise that is given to them as the people of God in the context of what God has given them. All these blessings, we are told in verse 2, will come upon you. They will overtake you.

It's not like they're going to have to go searching after them. They will overtake you if they are obedient. And what are the blessings? Well, let's look at them. Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the country.

Now, that sounds rather trite, doesn't it? Isn't that rather simplistic? But the idea, obviously, is that God's blessing will be upon his people no matter where they are. It will be a universal style of blessing.

Whether you are a city dweller, whether you live in the midst of the people within the city and you engage in commerce or anything like that, you may even be behind those large stone walls that would be a part of the major cities amongst the people of Israel.

Or whether you are the simple farmer, whether you're simply the one raising livestock, a vineyard upon the hills, whatever it is, the blessing will not be limited to one stratum of the people. All the people, wherever they live, whatever their class, we might say, will experience the blessing of God.

Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Now, for most of us, we go, well, that's really exciting.

When we first moved here in 1974, and I'm pretty certain that after 30 years, there's a law somewhere that says you're a native. If you've survived 30 Augusts, you're a native. I think you deserve that.

But we moved here in 1974. The place where we lived, out on 59th Avenue, 57th Avenue, north of Bell Road, that was about the only thing out there, okay? And there's still a few open fields out there, but not many.

We were way, way, way out there. Bell Road was one lane each direction with only one traffic light between I -17 and Sun City. That gives you an idea, if you ever try driving down Bell Road, you know how things have changed.

As you come back in toward the city, you would have these neighborhoods, and they're still there, that had what were called horse privileges. And if you hadn't known that they had horse privileges, if you rolled your windows down, you would learn fairly quickly that they had horse privileges.

And so, if you bought a home there, you just knew that there was going to be livestock. And in fact, there would be chickens, and so you'd have roosters crowing at sunrise, and all sorts of stuff like that.

And it was, you know, sort of the outer reaches of the, which is now, you know, buried in the midst of a much larger city. But they're still there. If you go up 51st Avenue, 43rd Avenue, around Greenway, you'll still see some of those places out there.

They're not as popular as they used to be. And so, maybe if you lived in a place like that, you might have an idea about, well, it'd be nice to have the offspring of your beast blessed, or the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock.

But obviously, this is a blessing that's not supposed to be limited just simply to agricultural context, though that was the primary context. I mean, even those who lived in the city, they would be dependent upon the land around to provide for food.

We somehow have forgotten the fact that we who live in a city are very dependent upon those very same people. We may not see the trucks coming in at 2 a .m. in the morning to provide us with all of our food at a local grocery store, but they're there.

And if they stopped coming, we would have a major problem. Obviously, ancient Israel was not nearly as segregated into the urban and agricultural context as we are. But this blessing was upon the family, the offspring of your body, the produce of your ground, the offspring of your beast.

So, in other words, all the ways that provided for life and the continuation of the people of God would experience his blessing. We, in our day, live in a sanitized society. We have the blessings of medical advancement.

Some of you may have heard some of the horror stories coming out of Rio right now in regards to the Olympics and the lack of sanitary water supply and even the lack of food in some areas. Few of us have ever experienced much of that.

But the reality is that most of the human family, down through the ages, would fully understand how this would be blessing. During certain periods, especially after the plague hit Europe, for example, and one-third of Europe disappeared, died.

That created the middle class, actually, which is a fascinating way of doing it. Not quite the way you'd want to, but that's how it happened. In many places, you would have to have 10 live births to have one child make it through to maturity.

That is how much infant mortality there was. And so almost every family had been touched by death due to disease. And not just the kinds of diseases that we would think about in our day that take the older people, but diseases that would take young people and young adults and just simply would come without any warning, and you didn't know how to protect yourself.

These would be great blessings, great blessings that you would have offspring. Obviously, amongst the people of Israel. Remember the Levite Law that we discussed? The whole reason that the Levite Law existed was because to maintain the stability in the land, the family unit had to continue on.

So it was very important that you would have the ability to have offspring, and that they would be healthy, and they would live through to maturity, and that your crops would grow. How many times did God bring judgment upon the people of Israel, and how would he do it?

He would stop the rain. And while for a while, you can, you know, we've developed ways, obviously here in Arizona, given how very often this happens to us, we've developed ways to try to store water and things like that.

Still, even with all of the reservoir systems and canal systems and everything else, if it stops raining for an extended period of time, stuff just dies. That's just how it works. And God is the one who is in control of those things.

The produce of your ground, the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd, the young of your flock, these would all be the ways in which food would be provided. And stability within the society, when food is scarce, this is one of the primary things that causes instability in ancient societies, was a lack of being able to provide for food for your people.

And it's not just ancient societies, not all that far from us here. Down in Venezuela, there are many people who are having to spend pretty much every waking moment seeking to try to obtain sufficient food to live.

And that is always the situation in sub-Saharan Africa and places like that as well. And so we may sort of look at this and may not see the depth of the blessing, but basically God is saying, I will give you provision.

I will provide stability for your life. Now notice he doesn't say, I will give you such an overabundance of these things that you will be able to lay around all day and throw your gold coins in the air and drive the ancient equivalent of whatever, I don't know what a Maserati would be back then, some kind of a horse and chariot type thing, I suppose.

That's not a part of the blessings. That's not even in view, primarily because as the covenant people of God, they were to be focused upon other things and that would be specifically living a peaceful life so that they might worship their God.

So that kind of excessive abundance of riches, there's prosperity, but there's not that kind of godly living in view in what is said to be here. But the idea is you will be given a peaceful, blessed existence where you're not having to spend every waking moment concerned about gathering sufficient food to be able to meet your basic needs.

That's also what's in light in verse 5, blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. So in the very cooking of the food, in the provision within the family, there will be God's blessing upon these things and there will be sufficiency of food and eating within the family itself.

Now, of course, a kneading bowl still takes work. The blessing isn't that the food will just appear on your table. There's still to be, you know, you have to take care of your flock. They may be blessed, but that means you've got all the more cleaning to do.

That's all the more manual labor. There's nothing here about indolence. There's nothing here about sitting upon beds of ease while slaves bring you large clusters of grapes. This is not what the blessing is that is in view at all.

Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. Now, that again sort of sounds like in the city and the country. But the going in, the going out, this is in all of your travels, in all of your activities, in your going into your house and coming out of your house.

And remember, one of the things that God had commanded his people to do that the Jewish people still have to this day, if you've ever been to a Jewish bookstore or something like that, I have a couple of these, is that you are to have a mezuzah.

And if you've ever seen a mezuzah, it's normally, well, some of them can become very large and ornate, but normally it's just a small, it can be made out of stone, something like that. And inside it is a scroll with normally the ten words, the ten commandments written upon it in Hebrew.

And this is attached to the doorpost of the home so that when you go out, you see the mezuzah. When you come in, you see the mezuzah. You are reminded of God's law. And if you remember the context of the giving of the shema, if it continues on, it talks about loving God and it talks about how you are to speak about these things with your children as you go in the way, as you're going out, as you're coming in.

It is to be a part of the everyday experience of the people of God, to be immersed in his truth and to think about his truth. And hence there is a blessing upon the coming into the home. There is a blessing upon the going out.

The blessing is not limited to only when you're near the tabernacle or only when you're near whatever the place of worship once the temple is built. No, the people of God, in all of their activities, even in their manual labor of kneading of the bread or the going out to check upon your herds or to deal with the various issues that come up in your everyday activity, there will be a blessing upon you and it will follow you wherever you go.

It is not something that you only obtain when you go to a certain place at a certain time. Yahweh shall cause, verse 7, your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will come out against you one way and will flee before you seven ways.

And so there is to be peace internally and then protection externally against those who would come against the people of Israel. So those who would rise up against them, they would be defeated before them.

That was what they had experienced in the leadership of Joshua. And even if they come out one way, so they come out as a united force coming against the people of Israel, they will flee before you seven ways.

So in other words, they will be scattered and they will not head just straight back to where they had come from, but they will be in such disarray that they will be scattered in every direction. This again reminds us of the fact that it is over and over again repeated in Scripture that it is the foolish people that trust in military might.

It is the foolish people that trust in the horse and the bow and the sword and the armor and the chariot and wherever else it might be. And I must say to the United States of America, it's foolish when we pride ourselves in our technology and in the advancement of our weapons and in anything else like that.

Because we must understand that no people is saved by the size of their army. No people is saved by the brilliance of their engineers or their scientists. Because if God wants to bring judgment upon a people, it doesn't matter how big their army is.

You may recall that more than once, huge armies came against the people of Israel and when God chose to deliver them, the size of the army did not matter. The angel of the Lord can in one night take care of the largest army man could ever field.

And you can have all the GPS guided missiles and high flying planes you want, but the angel of the Lord does not care about any of those things. And there is no power upon this earth. We show ourselves to be truly foolish.

We show ourselves truly to be children of the secular age. When we think that fundamentally the relationship of nations is determined by arms and determined by the power of military forces. If we have learned anything from our Lord Jesus Christ, did he not say even on his way to the cross when he was, it seemed, at the very weakest, under the very control of the greatest military force of that day, the Roman Empire.

From external forces, that's what it looked like. From the external position, it looked like the Messiah was under the very control of the Romans and was going to die a hideous death of weakness at the hand of the Romans.

But is that what Jesus believed? What did he say? I could ask my Father for a legion of angels. And if we know what one angel can do, what would a legion do? Could wipe out the entire, we would have no way of even defending ourselves because they exist on a level that we have no weapons that can be formed to do anything in.

And if you have been deeply, deeply influenced by the ways of the thinking of this world, that sounds foolish to you. But this was Jesus who we believe made all things on his way to the cross and he recognizes that there is no power on earth that can deliver the Son of God to death unless the Son of God chooses to submit himself to that power.

And if he chooses to do away with that power, that power will be done away with. We must understand this. And it truly is, I think, an indicator of how influenced we are by the world as to whether that causes us some level of embarrassment.

My friends, that can't cause us embarrassment. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We believe he rose from the dead. How much more of a supernatural reality is that than to simply make the statement that God could, God could take the entire universe out of existence.

He's the one holding it all together. If he brought it into existence, he can take it out of existence. If you've got a God who is lesser than the universe in which he lives, that's one of the gods that will pass away.

That's the very message of Jeremiah chapter 10. If your God did not create this universe, well, then he's not the true God. Is that radical? Better believe it's radical. Are there certain people in the People's Communist Republic of California that would like to make it illegal to even teach people things like that?

I think there are. I think they're working on it. Because I'm going to tell you one thing. Totalitarians, they don't like when people think differently than they think. We've all got to think the same thoughts.

That's how to be inclusive. Okay, that's confusing to me, too, because it's obviously a contradiction. But the point is this. God is the one who grants peace to nations. God is the one who protects nations.

And we do not show ourselves to be wise when we trust in military might rather than recognizing the only safety for this nation or any other nation is in obedience to God and seeking his blessing. And I just simply must say that given that we have stood up and spit in God's face, we cannot expect his blessing when we despise his truth.

They will flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and all that you put your hand to. He will bless you in the land which Yahweh your God gives you. Yahweh will establish you as a holy people to himself as he swore to you if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your God and walk in his ways.

And so there will be a commandment. The blessing, God will command the blessing upon you in your barns and all that you put your hand to. So there is, again, a stability. There is a passing on of the blessing of God to the next generation.

You would have something to give to your children or your children's children because that's what happens when you have peace upon a land, when you have justice being done in that land. What happens when justice ceases to be done?

Well, you start seeing evil people gathering lands together and they start to oppress the orphan and the widow and all the things that we see happening in the prophets and all the things that we see happening in the history of the nation of Israel that takes place.

The blessing of God that comes upon you in obedience comes upon you in your barns and all that you put your hand to. There is a general societal wellness. And, of course, this couldn't happen. I mean, when you think about this, the blessing upon the barns, all you put your hand to, that means that there is security.

There is safety. There is a restraint upon the evil of men. There is a restraint upon thievery. There is a restraint upon misusing the legal system to try to gather for yourself things that are not your own.

There is a restraint. All these blessings require that God, by His Spirit, is restraining the evil of man amongst the people of God. That is a tremendous blessing. And there have been times in our past when this nation has experienced that very same restraint.

But we are seeing that hand of restraint being withdrawn in our own experience. He will bless you in the land which Yahweh, your God, gives you. That is a tremendous blessing. Peace and security. The ability to sleep at night.

I don't know about you, but I've got to lock all my doors and windows. And there's more than once I've woken up going, What was that? What was that? You know, you hear something outside. I forget how many years ago it was.

Sometime in the early 2000s. But I remember waking up all of a sudden. What was that? I look out the window. Just in time to see someone smash in the window of Kelly's car. And, of course, once the lights go on, the door opens, they take off.

And it's 2 o 'clock in the morning. And you wake up and you've just heard that strange noise. We live in one of the largest cities in the United States. And people that are out and about at 2 o 'clock in the morning are either up to no good or they're trying to ride their bike 100 miles before it's so hot they die.

That's about the only thing. So I know when I'm out there that I sort of keep my eyes on things. I've had a few cops, by the way, flash their high beam, the thing they can direct at me. I can't see it behind the high beam, but I can just see the rolling of the eyes and the shaking of the head as the officer goes by going, well, there's a pretty interesting fellow, but he doesn't look like he's going to be causing any problems, I suppose.

But most everybody else out that time in the morning, probably not up to a whole lot of good. There used to be a time, I know Kinsley, Kansas, where my grandmother lived, the idea of locking your doors at night.

Huh? Why? Why would you do that? You've got good neighbors around you. Why would you lock your doors? Not too many places like that left, unfortunately. There are few and far between. He will bless you in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.

Yahweh will establish you as a holy people to himself as he swore to you. Well, there really is the question. There really is the question. How much did the people of Israel want that? And what people would ever truly desire to have that?

Is that not the very essence of the promise of the new covenant? I will write my law upon their hearts. They will know me from the least to the greatest of them. Is that not the very blessing of the new covenant is that what was once external, what was once offered to a mixed people, yes, they were regenerate people.

There were regenerate people. There were people who loved God's law, but they weren't even the majority. In fact, eventually they become what's called the remnant. The few, the 7 ,000 have not bowed the knee to Baal.

If you give your holy law to man who has fallen in Adam, the reaction to that law, well, it's predictable. It may take different paths. There can be open rebellion. There can be the type of religious rebellion.

There can be the apathetic response. But there will not be on the part of the unregenerate man an ability to truly function as the holy people of God. Yahweh will establish you as a holy people to himself.

How much do we want to be identified as the holy people of God? How much do we, his people, who are indwelt by his spirit and have had that heart of stone removed, that heart of flesh given to us, do we want to be the holy people?

Is that how we want to be known? That certainly is the commandment. Is it not? Is that not what Peter said? Be ye holy, for I am holy. Is that not his very central sermon to the people to whom he writes, we are to be holy as he is holy.

We are a peculiar people. This is what we are called to be in this world. And they pull these very texts and make application to the church in the New Testament. As he swore to you, if you keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and walk in his ways.

There is no promise of having that high lofty position of being the holy people of God to those who walk in rebellion against God's commandments and do not walk in his ways. So all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of Yahweh.

It's always struck me that one of the most heart-rending accusations that the prophets bring against the people of Israel is what? You have brought shame to the name of Yahweh your God. The peoples look at you and say, oh, there's the followers of Yahweh.

Notice how they're bringing idols into their temple. Notice how they may go to the temple of their God on their appointed feast days, but I know where they are when they're at the high places on the other days of the week.

Doesn't seem like their passion for Yahweh is overly particular, and yet they're the ones that tell us. They're the ones that claim Yahweh is the only God, but boy, it seems like they don't live that way.

They had brought shame and disrespect upon God's name because they took his name in covenant and then did not live up to the commandments that he gave to them. So all the peoples of the earth will see that you are called by the name of Yahweh, if what?

If you do these things. And they will be afraid of you. You will have that kind of reputation. But again, this is the blessings portion. And how rare was the time when the people of Israel walked in those blessings.