Warning for Cursings

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Well, I did my absolute best this morning to warn you all off, and so I figure if you're here, you are here because you want to be here, and you are ready to deal with the text this evening,
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Deuteronomy chapter 27. Deuteronomy chapter 27.
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And once again, before we handle God's Holy Word, let us ask him to bless our time together.
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Our Grace Heavenly Father, once again, we turn to your Word, and we ask for your wisdom.
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We ask for your guidance. We ask for your spirit to make this time profitable, profitable for us in our education, in our edification, in our moving toward being a mature people in service to you, and profitability in bringing honor and glory to the name of Jesus Christ.
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This truly is our desire. We ask that your spirit would meet with us to make this possible. We pray in Christ's name.
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Amen. Deuteronomy chapter 27. We began moving into this text this morning, and we have here, truly, the beginning of the blessings and cursings section.
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The people are to enter in, and before they do so, there is going to be, beginning in verse 15, a series of announcements of the very curses that come upon those who take the covenant name upon themselves, enter into covenant with God, and yet then violate the terms of that covenant, that is, violate
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God's commandments. And I think what we have here is an excellent summary, a representation of the laws that we've looked at in much more detail.
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But here, we have them placed before us in such a way that clearly, the people of God are put in a position of knowingly entering into this covenant relationship.
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It would sort of be like if we if we were having a discipline problem with with one of our children, and we decided that we needed to sit down and have an extensive conversation, and we needed to lay out, okay, look, this is exactly what you need to be doing.
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These are your duties in the household. These are the things you are to be doing. These are the things that you are not to be doing.
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And then, we basically had the the young person go through what their duties are, and then announce what the punishments for the violations of those duties would be, that have them specifically lay them out, not just sit there as it normally happens today, and the parent goes, all right, if you don't do your homework by such -and -such time, then you're not going to be able to do this on the computer, or you're not going to be able to engage in this activity, etc.,
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etc., and they just sit there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when they don't do it, well, I didn't I didn't understand that.
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No, what you what you do now is you literally have them go over it, and be very, very clear in the understanding of exactly what's going to take place.
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Well, God isn't leaving any bit of ambiguity whatsoever in this section of Scripture as to what the very essence of the covenant is and what the conditions are.
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So, beginning in verse 11, Deuteronomy chapter 27, Moses also charged the people on that day, saying, when you cross the
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Jordan, these shall stand at Mount Gerizim to bless the people, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin.
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For the curse, these shall stand at Mount Ebal, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
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The Levites shall then answer and say to all the men of Israel with a loud voice,
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Cursed is the man who makes an idol, or a molten image, an abomination to Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsmen, and sets it up in secret.
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And all the people shall answer and say, Amen. Cursed is he who dishonors his father or mother, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary mark, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who misleads a blind person on the road, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who lies to his father's wife, because he has uncovered his father's skirt, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who lies with any animal, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father, or of his mother, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who lies to his mother -in -law, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who accepts a bribe to strike down an innocent person, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of his law, this law, by doing them.
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And all the people shall say, Amen. Well, here is the section of curses.
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And certainly we recognize that this is not an exhaustive listing of all the things that could have been said.
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But it is a rather interesting restatement of various categories of the law that we saw in much more detail, both in Leviticus and in Deuteronomy.
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And it should not surprise us, then, that the Levites are to stand between these two camps, and on the two mountains, and they are to, with loud voice, say to all the men of Israel with a loud voice, and the people are to be responding, and by saying,
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Amen, saying, It is true, there is a specific commitment being made on the part of the people in agreement with the statement of the law as it is being stated, and the fact that there is a curse placed upon any individual in this congregation who, standing there that day, hears these words, and then would violate the terms of the covenant by violating the commandments of God in these ways.
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And so, there never could be any claim of ignorance. There never could be any claim that, well, it just wasn't clear, we just didn't really know what to do.
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One of the books I've been reading, it's 32 hours long in audio format, so even at high speed, it's taking a while to get through it, but some of you know that I'm a bit of a, well, see, you can determine where someone was born by how they describe this.
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If you were born north of a certain line, then it was called the Civil War. If you're born south of a certain line, then it's either the
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War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression. If you get real far south of the line, it's the
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War of Northern Aggression. But there are certain individuals in that conflict that are fascinating.
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One of them is a man by the name of Robert E. Lee, and I'm reading a very, very lengthy biography of Robert E.
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Lee. And one of the problems that Lee had was he was an incredible gentleman, just,
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I mean, if you think about the stereotypical southern gentleman, that's what he was.
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And one of the problems was when he would give commands during a battle, he would do so as a gentleman.
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And sometimes what he needed to do was get in somebody's face and yell at them with clarity.
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But sometimes he didn't do that. And so there, he would, he would, he would command more in the form of suggestion.
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And he would have phrases like, if it is practicable, that's not really the way to get somebody to do things.
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And, and it ended up causing some severe problems. And in fact, it was one of the main problems at the Battle of Gettysburg, which was the turning point as far as the decline of the south was concerned.
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And so sometimes there was a, there was an ambiguity. Sometimes there was a lack of clarity.
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No one could ever make the accusation that God had been unclear in laying out his commandments.
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Men could be unclear. Men could, could fog things up. God did not fog anything up here at all.
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He made it very, very clear. And so you have the Levites and they're standing between his camps and they cry out and they say with a loud voice.
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Curse it is the man who makes an idol or a molten image, an abomination to Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsmen and sets it up in secret.
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And then in their ears, in stereo, comes back the statement from the two camps.
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Amen. It is true. Now it should not shock any of us that the very first thing that is said, the very first curse that is uttered is a curse against idolatry.
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For we know that fundamentally when a people are focused passionately in love with their
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God, then the following of the rest of the law seems to come along. But when idolatry begins to move into the land, when there is in the, amongst the people, a weakening of that passion for God or the diversion of some of that passion towards some other object, indeed, the rest is going to fall like a house of cards.
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And so you have the idols, the molten images, which are said to be an abomination to Yahweh.
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In fact, as we've pointed out before in the book of Isaiah, not only is the idol identified as an abomination, but the one who chooses to worship the idol is likewise called an abomination.
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Remember, you become like what you worship. If you want to worship an idol, you yourself become an abomination before God.
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You take on the characteristics of that which you worship. And so the first curse is upon this horrible and sadly all too frequent experience of the people of Israel.
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All through the Old Testament, we will read of the Asherim, we will read of the
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Baals, we'll read of the high places. And what is this but syncretism?
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It is the bringing in of foreign worship. Sometimes people will think that it's okay to engage in the worship of these idols as long as you go and worship
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Yahweh as well, because that was the way people thought. There were multiple gods and they had control over various areas.
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And so there would be syncretism. There would be the joining together of the pure worship of God with the worship of others.
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But what was always eventually the result of this? Eventually, you even have the bringing of these idols into the very temple itself.
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You have the utter degradation of the worship of God. It is done away with.
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They do not want to have any remembrance of that God who had made covenant with them, any remembrance of that God who demands of them holiness of life.
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And so the first curse against idolatry, that which is an abomination in the sight of Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up even in secret.
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Even if someone were to do this only within their own home, oh, isn't that the way we think today?
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As long as I'm not bothering anybody else, what I do in the secrecy of my own home? No, any idolatry whatsoever cursed is that man and all the people shall answer and say,
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Amen. They say, yes, this is a true thing. They cannot come back later and say, well, that seems so harsh.
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But you said, Amen. You said it is true. You agreed to this.
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You're saying, you know, we sing the Amen. We may be the only people left on the planet who sing the
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Amen. I actually, I was even at an
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OPC a couple of weeks ago, and I made reference in the morning service to the fact that we might be a little more reformed than they are.
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Because even though they had the Trinity Hymnal and even a Psalter, they didn't sing the
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Amen. Well, guess what they did that night? Yes, indeed. Now, I don't know if they're still doing it, but yeah, they're not too many people that do it.
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Well, what are we supposed to be doing when we sing the Amen? We're supposed to be giving our assent to the truthfulness of the sentiments that were expressed within that hymn.
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It's not just simply a way to have a nice resolving chord at the end, even though I'm not sure that we do a really good job of resolving that chord anyways.
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But that's not why you do it. It is supposed to be saying what we have said is true.
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We are testifying of the truthfulness of that. That is what is going on in this text as well.
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Verse 16. Cursed is he who dishonors his father or mother, and all the people shall say
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Amen. Right after idolatry comes the sanctity, the propriety of the family.
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First, the relationship to God. Secondly, the relationship to fellow man. And certainly this points to that most basic and foundational of human institutions, the family as established by God.
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And so the one who dishonors father or mother is said to be cursed, and the people agree to this.
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And certainly we saw a number of permutations of this in the law, in the necessity of treating the elderly, treating one's parents with respect, with care.
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There was not to be this idea of the older or simply to be cast off.
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There was to be a continued relationship throughout one's life within the family, and this was to be a part of the people of God.
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Verse 17. Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundary mark, and all the people shall say
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Amen. And we might say, well, how is that relevant? Well, hopefully we already know a number of the texts, a number of the difficult texts that we addressed.
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We realized that the answer to the difficulty of those texts was seeing the fact that it was
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God's intention that the land that had been promised to the people be passed down in a certain way through families.
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So there's actually a relationship here between verses 16 and 17. If you have a disruption of the family in verse 16, then what happens with the breakdown of the family is the danger of people beginning to gather land together.
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Buying land in an inappropriate fashion, removing it from the proper families, and hence you have the rich beginning to persecute the poor.
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And this is exactly what ends up taking place in the history of Israel. And here, the moving of the neighbor's boundary mark would be engaging in, well, land theft is really what it is.
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I mean, we have it pretty easy today. We have GPS and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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And in fact, I understand that in the nicer farm machinery that's out there now, unlike the days of my dad who had to work a farm and had to do farming and he had to plow those straight rows and stuff like that out there in the
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Kansas heat. Now you've got air conditioned tractors that are driven by GPS and all you got to do is sit in there and you listen to your iPod and the machinery just does all the rest.
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And I'm not sure that anything could grow without that extra effort being put in by the farmer, but evidently it does.
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And you don't have to worry about how straight the rows are or anything like that at all. And I just I think that takes all the magic out of it personally.
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But this would be sort of like in our day somehow hacking your neighbor's
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GPS device on his tractor so it only does three quarters of his field and then you just sort of move over and do the other quarter and then you can get that extra produce.
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That would sort of be the modern way of doing it. It was showing disrespect for your fellow covenant member and disrespect for the fact that God had intended that you are to live in peace and harmony within the land and that you were to see yourself as a community.
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This was fundamentally selfishness, wanting more for yourself and less for your neighbor.
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And so this is a justice issue. Justice within the covenant people of God, a curse is pronounced upon the one who would move his neighbor's boundary mark.
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Further, the concept of justice is seen in verse 18. Cursed is he who misleads a blind person on the road and all the people shall say amen.
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Well, you would think of all the laws that were given to us in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, misleads a blind person.
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Well, it was there. Remember in Leviticus chapter 19, the needing to respect individuals, not taking advantage of those with physical handicaps, the loving your neighbors yourself, which
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Jesus said is the second of the greatest commandments. And it's all there. And so you have what we sometimes call general equity.
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But here, when you think about it, what kind of a person could ever even think to do such a thing?
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It would seem that such would be such a violation of common morality and common behavior.
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And yet, here is a curse placed upon anyone who would take advantage of someone else's physical disability to mislead the blind person or to in any way engage in behavior where you're taking advantage of someone else.
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And it simply says a blind person, it doesn't say a fellow citizen of Israel, but that would be first and foremost the application that would be made, obviously.
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But there is a curse placed upon someone in general behavior. There needs to be a general morality exercised amongst the covenant people of God.
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That's continued in verse 19. Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow, and all the people shall say amen.
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And so a curse is brought down upon anyone who would engage in the distortion of justice.
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And we are reminded once again of the fact that in the Psalter, we are told that the very foundation of God's throne is justice.
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God is very concerned about justice. But in our day, that term has become a term that has been redefined on the basis of a humanistic social construct rather than the justice that is defined by the word of God.
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And now we have the social justice warriors. And you have a redefinition of terms and a redefinition of what justice is.
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The fact is that that beautiful word once had a meaning when it was presented as it was in the early days of this nation within the context of the
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Judeo -Christian worldview. That there is going that there is a judge and there is going to be judgment.
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I submit to you that when you have a worldview where there is no longer a judge and there will never be judgment.
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Justice becomes a solely human thing.
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It cannot transcend above human society. And if that human society is nothing more than the accidental biological results of indeterminate accidental sources.
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Then justice cannot have any transcendent meaning. This then is the reason why a few years ago you may recall
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I had a debate with an atheist. And the atheist really attempted to argue that there was no basis for morality anywhere in the world.
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That the New Testament itself was, well this is the odd thing about it, he argued there is no morality but he said the
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New Testament is evil. Think about that for a second, that really doesn't work too well.
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And so I began pressing him on that issue. And in pressing him on that issue he eventually had to confess that if he stood at the gates of Auschwitz.
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All he could consistently say in his worldview would be, I would have done it differently.
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I would have done it differently. Some of you saw that debate with David Silverman.
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He's been frequent president of the American Atheists. He was vice president of the American Atheists that year.
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I would have done it differently. That's all that the world could come up with. That's all the world can say.
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That's all they have. Is I would have done it differently. That is a distortion of justice due an alien orphan and widow.
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Because the justice being spoken of here is the justice that God will demand as judge of all of humankind.
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There will be a judgment. Justice will be done. Every single human being will either receive absolute justice.
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But believe me that's not what you want. You don't want justice. Justice will be done but it will be done within the context of God's grace and mercy.
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What you want is God's mercy. You don't want God's justice. No one will get injustice. You will either get exactly what you deserve or you will get mercy.
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No one will get injustice. We need to keep that in mind. And so cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien orphan and widow.
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In other words, those who have the weakest position in the society. Those who are the most likely to be taken advantage of.
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The alien, the orphan and the widow. Do not distort the justice due to them. Verse 20.
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If you'll notice verses 20, 21, 22 and 23.
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All go together. Cursed is he who lies to his father's wife because he has uncovered his father's skirt.
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Cursed is he who lies with any animal. Cursed is he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or of his mother.
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Cursed is he who lies with his mother -in -law and all the people shall say amen. We saw all of these laws in the holiness code and we saw them repeated twice.
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We saw them placed within the context of Leviticus chapter 18. In the catalog of sins of the people of the nations.
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And they had been driven out of the land because of that. And then we saw in verse chapter 20 of Leviticus.
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Where those same laws are then incorporated into the covenant law of the people of Israel. With the associated penalties that come with those activities.
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If they are found amongst the people of Israel. For those were the very activities that had caused the land to spew its former inhabitants out.
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And so it is not an exhaustive list. But it involves close family relationships.
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It involves the confusion, that was the very term that was used. Confusion of bestiality verse 21.
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And all of these things are condemned. Now you might say, well it sure would have been helpful for us today.
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If there had been a repetition of the condemnation of homosexuality. Well I hope you realize there is.
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These are not, I mean when you take four. You had one for idolatry.
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And now you have four representing the sexual sins. Was there anybody on either one of those mountains.
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That didn't get the idea that what this means is the entire holiness code.
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In regards to sexual ethics is absolutely incumbent upon all the people of God. Did you have to repeat every single one of them.
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When you have repeated four of them. In these categories that are found here.
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You are obviously encompassing the entirety of that law that had been given.
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And so it is not just, well that was just a cultic thing. No, here you have as a very part of the stipulations.
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The stipulations, the conditions of the covenant. When the people enter into the land.
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Well the first things there to do are to be reminded of these fundamental basic things.
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And while the fundamental basic things that is emphasized. In fact you could argue it is the most emphasized.
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In the curses is the purity of sexual relationship. That is to exist amongst the people of God in the land.
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And this is laid out and made very, very clear. Yes there is a danger of them violating these things because of idolatry and things like that.
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But there is no stipulation that it is only within idolatrous religious worship that these things are wrong.
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The wrongness is in the action and that wrongness can be expressed in many different contexts.
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And so here you have these curses that are laid out. And these curses are specifically made known to the people of God.
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There is no question. No one can say I didn't hear. And they very clearly reflect what was contained in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20.
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Both very key passages that we have covered fairly in depth over the past couple of years.
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Verse 24. Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret and all the people shall say amen.
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Now this of course reflects back upon the fact there needs to be peace amongst the people of God.
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And of course to strike your neighbor in secret. So much of what we looked at when the elders would have to inquire and do investigation into the shedding of innocent blood and things like that.
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Was due to the fact there needed to be multiple witnesses. And so here there were ways of undercutting the intention of the law and to strike your neighbor in secret.
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So there could be no justice done. You would have bloodshed in the land.
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And remember we went over sections where there were sacrifices that were specifically designed.
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To address unjustified actions.
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In other words where situations that arise where justice couldn't be done. You could not know.
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We would call them cold cases. But where justice could not be done. And there was something fundamentally wrong in allowing blood guiltiness to come upon the land.
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People understood that it wasn't just well you know we'll never know. It would be nice to know but we'll just never know.
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The necessity of justice being done amongst the people of God again points to the reality.
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The foundation of His throne is justice. And if His people are not concerned about that justice taking place.
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There is a curse even if you get away with it. Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret.
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And all the people shall say amen. Verse 25. Cursed is he who accepts a bribe to strike down an innocent person.
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And all the people shall say amen. What are both of these really about? They are about ways in which you could undercut the legal system that had been provided by God to protect the people of God.
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There's always a way to do that. There's always a way to get around legal systems, laws.
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A bribe? Well, all you've got to do is find yourself the judge with the right price, right?
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Now has this been something that has happened amongst mankind down through the ages? Yes. But there is certainly, there is certainly something to be said.
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When you have judges, those who are given the special position of functioning as the guardians of justice in a society.
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Not only should those individuals be given double honor. But great is their judgment should they choose to abuse the office that is theirs.
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And unrighteous judges are a plague upon the earth.
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There is a psalm, Psalm 82. It's a psalm you might want to review sometime.
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Because part of its very fundamental message is that when those who are entrusted with doing what is right, protecting the orphan, protecting the widow, protecting the alien, against those who would have more power, who would have more wealth, they are the final bulwark.
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The widow is to be able to come to the judge and ask for justice. When those individuals begin to act in unjust ways, when they lose their respect for God, when they lose sight of the reality, that they themselves will be judged.
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The very foundations of the society, the very foundations of human activity are threatened.
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And I simply submit to you today that we are seeing a time period where those who now sit as judges in our own land have been raised and trained within a worldview that fundamentally has no foundation for maintaining justice.
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And so we cannot be surprised that we are seeing these things that we call decisions, which are actually nothing more than distortions of justice.
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For when people begin to act in a consistently secular manner, they will fundamentally distort justice.
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For there can be no foundation for true justice when you believe that we are nothing more than accidents.
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Verse 26 summarizes the curses. Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them, and all the people shall say,
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Amen. Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.
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So in other words, you can stand there and you can lead the chorus of amens.
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You can have the loudest voice saying, Amen. But if you then go and in your heart undercut all these things, in your heart you lust after your neighbor's wife, in your heart you do not love your neighbor as yourself.
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In other words, if you engage in hypocrisy, you do not confirm the words of this law by doing them.
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Saying has never, ever been enough. Remember James chapter 2?
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If you say, you have faith. But you do not do.
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Empty words. All James is reflecting is what was said here.
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The only way to be a true follower of God in this context is to confirm the words of this law by doing them.
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There is an active element. It's not just skating by and just getting by with this, that, or the other thing.
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Well, I didn't really intend to do that. No, you confirm the words of this law by doing these things.
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Remember Paul's citation? He who is to live by these things must do these things.
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Now we all recognize, the entire history of the Bible is the inability of the unregenerate heart to do these things.
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There can be playing. There can be pretense. There can be temporary external obedience.
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There can be hard obedience. And it will not last. And eventually it always devolves down into a form of external religion that is putrefying to a people.
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Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. Now, as that last amen echoed in the ears of the people, chapter 28 begins.
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And, at the beginning, you'll have the wonderful blessings.
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The blessings of God upon his people. And they're beautiful.
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But they only last for about 14 verses. And you may have noticed it's a long chapter.
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It's a very long chapter. And the rest, the rest of those curses are not in this form.
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They're not the people calling down the curse upon people who don't do these things. It's God saying, when you're obedient,
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I'll give you these blessings. And when you as the covenant people of God decide to show disdain for everything that I have given to you, all of those blessings will be turned to curses.
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And really when you think about it, the reason that the cursings are so much longer than the blessings is just simply all the different ways in which good things can become very, very bad things.
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Very, very bad things. And we will see the constant parallel between the blessings and the cursings as we look.
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But here was the context before the announcement of the blessings and cursings.
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You have cursed be. Amen. Amen. And as that amen, that last amen echoes off the mountains, that then becomes the context of the blessings and cursings of Deuteronomy chapter 28, which of course will be our focus of study on the next
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Lord's Day. So once again, I have made the horrific mistake of warning you ahead of time. Some of you right now are starting to have aches and pains.
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You're feeling flu coming on, something like that. And undoubtedly by Saturday, we will have a whole list of, of those who are laid up and unable to be here, or maybe not.
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Let's, let's hope not. But that's where we'll be going on the next Lord's Day. Let's close the word.
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Our holy yet merciful heavenly father. Once again, we have heard from your word, the necessity, the propriety of warnings for what happens for those who will take your name, seek your blessing, take your covenant, and then break the conditions of that covenant.
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Lord, we are so thankful that our covenant keeper has entered into the very holy place.
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We have a anchor that holds firm within the veil. We have one who has fulfilled all the covenant requirements and we are united with him.
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Oh, the blessing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you for it. We thank you for the study this evening.
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May we once again, seriously recognize and honor the intention of your law as it has been given to us, as it reflects your character.