Curses on Disobedience

Deuteronomy 28 and the Blessings Reversed

We continue with our study this evening in Deuteronomy chapter 28. Deuteronomy chapter 28. Let us ask the Lord's blessing upon our time together. Now Lord, as we open your word, we ask that you would give us insight, you would give us understanding, you would give us wisdom, that we might handle your word aright, that we might learn, you might be better servants of yours who pray in Christ's name.

Amen. We come to a section of scripture that is, of course, very difficult to handle. I want this evening primarily to outline the section and to make some direct application to just a couple of texts.

We will not attempt to work through every element of verses 15 and following to the end. I was trying to figure out some way of not having to read through the whole text, but I just don't know that that would really work out.

So I will attempt to do so at at a decent pace. And then, as I said, sort of outline what we hear in these words. I hope you'll keep in mind as I do read the blessings of this morning, because you will see that many of these are specifically negations, reversals of the blessings.

You had the blessing of the going out and the coming in, the blessing of the defeating of the enemies, the blessing of peace, and upon your children, and so on and so forth. You'll see that the vast majority of this is the negation of those specific things.

But also keep in mind the seriousness that this text communicates to us concerning the nature of a covenant, taking on the name of God, and then choosing to live in rebellion against him. I hope that that will come through as we consider these texts.

Deuteronomy 28, 15. But it shall come about, if you do not obey Yahweh your God, to observe the dualist commandments and his statutes with which I charge 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 offspring of your body and the produce of your ground, the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock.

Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall be when you go out. The Lord will send upon you curses, confusion, rebuke, and all you undertake to do, until you are destroyed, and until you perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.

Yahweh will make the pestilence cling to you until he has consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it. Yahweh will smite you with consumption, with fever, and with inflammation, with fiery heat, and with the sword, and with blight, and with mildew, and they will pursue you until you perish.

The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you iron. Yahweh will make the rain of your land powder and dust. From heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed.

Yahweh shall cause you to be defeated before your enemies, and you will go out one way against them, but you will flee seven ways before them, and you will be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

Your carcasses will be food to all the birds of the sky, and to the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. Yahweh will smite you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors, and with the scab, and with the itch from which you cannot be healed.

Yahweh will smite you with madness, and with blindness, and bewilderment of heart, and you will grope at noon as the blind man gropes in darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways, but you shall only be oppressed and robbed continually with none to save you.

You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her. You shall build a house, but you will not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will not eat of it.

Your donkey shall be torn away from you, and will not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you will have none to save you. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them continually, but there will be nothing you can do.

A people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground, and all your labors, and you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually. You shall be driven mad by the sight of what you see.

Yahweh will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. Yahweh will bring you and your 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.

You shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where Yahweh drives you. You shall bring out much seed of the field, but you will gather in little, for the locusts will consume it.

You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them. You shall have olive trees throughout your territory, but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off.

You shall have sons and daughters, but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. The cricket shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground. The alien who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you will go down lower and lower.

He shall lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He shall be the head, you will be the tail. So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey Yahweh your God by keeping his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you.

They shall become a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever, because you did not serve Yahweh your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things. Therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom Yahweh will send against you in hunger and thirst and nakedness and the lack of all things, and he will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

Yahweh will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the young.

Moreover, it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish.

It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land. It shall besiege you in all your towns throughout your land, which Yahweh your God has given you.

Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters, whom Yahweh your God has given you. During the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you, the man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain.

So he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children, which he will eat since he has nothing else left during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns.

Refined and delicate woman among you who would not venture to set the sole of her feet on the ground for delicateness and refinement shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter and toward her afterbirth, which issues between her legs and toward her children whom she bears.

For she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in your towns. If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law, which are written in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, Yahweh your God, then Yahweh will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues and miserable and chronic sicknesses.

He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you. Also, every sickness and every plague, which not written in the book of this law, Yahweh will bring on you until you are destroyed.

Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the stars of the heaven, because you did not obey Yahweh your God. It should come about that the Lord, that as Yahweh delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you, so Yahweh will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you.

And you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. Moreover, Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you and your fathers have not known.

Among those nations you shall find no rest, and there will be no resting place for the sole of your foot. But there Yahweh will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul. So your life shall hang in doubt before you, and you will be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life.

In the morning you shall say, would it that it were evening, and at evening you shall say, would that it were morning, because of the dread of your heart, which you dread, and for the sight of your eyes, which you will see.

And Yahweh will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you, you will never see it again. And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.

The Seriousness of Covenant Rebellion

Well, how do we understand such tremendous curses? Well, the text itself tells us over and over, it reminds us that these are the curses that come upon those who have knowingly been given knowledge of who the true God is, knowledge of what his will is, knowledge of the blessings and privileges that would be theirs as his covenant people.

And yet in light of that, choose to follow after other gods, choose to break his commandments, well, choose to do the very things that we saw in the scripture reading this evening in Judges, where you have the altars to Baal already being built within the very early period of the nation of Israel.

These are the curses that come. And we saw at the beginning, there's a direct parallel in the first section of these curses, direct parallel to what we saw in the blessings in regards to the kneading bowl and to your offspring and to your herds.

And so you have, instead of those things being blessed, instead of prosperity, instead of a proper relationship to the nations round about Israel, now you have the reverse of that. The other nations will rule over them.

The other nations, they will have to borrow from them. And this, of course, is exactly what we see. But we need to recognize something. Sometimes people look at this and they go, well, there was never a time when all of these curses simultaneously came upon the people.

Well, yeah, I would imagine if all of them came upon the people at the exact same time, that would pretty much end the people right then and there. What we do see when we allow the rest of the Old Testament, and especially the prophetic books, to define for us the fulfillment of these things in the final, and hopefully you were noticing, the prophecy, the prophetic words that were found in these curses concerning the bringing of the foreign powers.

We can see the fulfillment of these things in Assyria and Babylon, a mixture of these things. And, of course, I realize if you wander over to the local community college, the university, this would be one of the texts.

They'd look at this and go, well, this can't have something to do with someone named Moses. This was all obviously written after all these things took place, because in the naturalistic worldview, there can't be prophecy.

There can't be something looking forward. There can't be anything that would indicate that God actually had a purpose in the rebellion of Israel, that these things would be for our edification, our instruction.

No, no, no, can't have any of that stuff. This is just man's writings. And so that means this all had to have been written after the period of the exile and everything else. That's what you're going to be told.

That's what is presented not only in universities and Bible colleges, but in many seminaries and Bible universities and colleges, community colleges. But that's also what is unfortunately said in probably the large majority of the seminaries and Bible colleges as well.

But there is a prophetic announcement. And it's interesting that there's really some fulfillment with the Assyrians, some fulfillment with the Babylonians. It's a mixture of the two, but obviously not all of these curses ever came about at any one time.

The point is that God is saying, this is the realm, this is the range of punishment that will be appropriate. You are taking this name upon yourself. You are saying, amen, amen, amen. It is true. We agree to all these things.

This is what you need to understand. Now, one thing I think hopefully we all hear when we hear this is what needs to be understood is this tells us. Sometimes we limit our statement of the seriousness of sin to summary statements.

Romans chapter three, the wages of sin is death. Well, that is a very true statement. That's a very true statement. But it is only a summary statement of what God has said. The removal of Shalom from the people of Israel.

That's really what many of these, especially toward the end of the section, when you have the people being dispersed into all the world, and yet they can have no home. They, because their home is in the promised land, since they have been expelled from that, just as the land had expelled the people that had done the same things before, they can have no home.

They have no Shalom. That term Shalom, peace, is a term that not only refers to a cessation of hostilities, but it refers to a wellness of relationship. And the statement is made many times, and the expression is made in many graphic ways here, of how even when they have been driven away, even when they are no longer in the land, that that punishment will continue in their service of false gods and their inability to have peace.

Think about that, that phraseology. In the morning, you'll say, oh, that it was evening. In the evening, you'll say, oh, that it was morning. Is that not the very statement of a person who has no Shalom?

It's the exact opposite of Shalom, because the only way that a covenanted people can have peace with God is to be in relationship with him. And the service of these other gods, the worship of these other gods, clearly can never provide that peace.

And so, you have tremendous statements made here of the removal of the positive blessing of peace and prosperity and what that will look like. You also have the discussion of what happens when a city is besieged, and it's graphic language.

And for many of us, we live in a day where we would be extremely squeamish if we even watched what happened in the offering of the sacrifices, even in the offering of the oxen, the bull on the altar this evening in the scripture reading.

I think if you had to watch a YouTube video of that, most of you would be very, very, very squeamish about something like that. Well, the description of what happens when a walled city is besieged is very graphic.

Many people would call it offensive, but it happened. We have the description in scripture of what took place, and it was a horrific thing for a population inside of a city to begin to experience that slow starvation and the turning upon one another.

And even, yes, we can document from history, not only in the situation of the people of Israel, but in many other situations, even cannibalism taking place within cities that are being besieged by a ferocious enemy where you are convinced that if you give in, it's actually going to be worse than what you're even experiencing within the context of the besieged city.

These are horrible things. There is no reason to even attempt to explain them away or to give them some spiritual meaning or anything else. These are literal descriptions of things that have happened, and they are terrible things.

And there are places in the world where similar things happen this day on the continent of Africa, for example, where there is war continuously. And in Sudan, especially horrific things happening on a regular basis.

We tend to sort of tune all of that out. But this type of evil takes place in this world, and it certainly gives the lie to those that would try to tell us that mankind is, in and of himself, just a really good creature.

It just needs to be properly educated and given a good job. That's a rather naive understanding of the nature of mankind. And certainly the enemies that God brought against the people of Israel, the Assyrians, were particularly known in history for their ferocious treatment of the people that they would conquer.

This is known not only from the biblical accounts, but from external accounts as well. And so these curses are presented to us. And I notice verse 37, for example, "...you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where Yahweh drives you.".

Those are the people who trusted in Yahweh, but they rebelled against him. Look what happened to them. Instead of being people who were feared because of Yahweh's blessings upon them, now they become a watchword, a byword.

And if you've read the book of Lamentations recently, you know exactly how this is fulfilled. And you can hear the cry of the heart of those that experienced these horrific things. But please note, how many generations passed by, how many centuries passed by of prophets being sent and restoration being sent and this constant cycle within the people of Israel before finally the fulfillment of the full extent of these curses was brought forth.

It wasn't upon the first generation. It wasn't upon the second. It wasn't upon the third. God was extremely, extremely lenient and patient toward these people, stretching out his hands toward them. But then you will notice a statement that after the prophetic language is used of probably bringing the Assyrians, Babylonians, the besiegement that takes place.

There are some statements that are made that I think we need to focus in upon and maybe understand exactly what is being said. You'll notice beginning around verse 60 or so, that the deliverance of Israel from Egypt comes into view as a paradigm or example.

And as God had brought them out through bringing disease and pestilence and the plagues upon the nation of Egypt to demonstrate his supremacy over the gods of Egypt. Now you have, in essence, a reversal of the birth process of the nation in the punishment of the people.

So in other words, they have become like the Egyptians, the very people that were the example of the world out of which they had been delivered now becomes the example of what they themselves have become.

And hence, they can hardly claim injustice if God does to them what he did to the Egyptians in freeing them from bondage and slavery. And so they are going back into, verse 60, he will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid and they will cling to you.

What a fitting thing that in the very memorials, many of their observances were meant to remind them. Think about what happened at Passover, meant to remind them of the great deliverance and the grace, the undeserved grace that had been delivered to them.

And now in the reversal of those things, the justice of God upon someone who would rebel in this way. And so we come to a very interesting yet difficult verse in verse 63. And I honestly don't remember ever hearing anyone preaching on this verse.

That doesn't mean anything. I mean, I'm sure it's been preached on more than once by many people. But it's not a popular one. It shall come about that as Yahweh delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you, so Yahweh will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you.

And you will be torn from the land where you're entering to possess it. Now, a lot of people are very comfortable with the idea of God delighting over his people. Prospering his people, very comfortable with the idea of God's being a God of blessing.

But there's a direct correlation here. Just as he delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you, so Yahweh will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you. It's there. What do you do with it?

The tendency of modern man is to arrogantly set ourselves up as the arbiter of what we will and will not accept. I know many a person today, popular writers, whose books line the shelves of many Christian bookstores, who will look you straight in the eye if you were even to mention this text.

And will say to you, that is not the word of the Lord. That is not divine revelation. That is what someone post-exile thought about God, but I do not feel myself constrained to believe that those words are true.

You will find many a person, popular writers today, the entire emergent church movement. As a whole, I think would embrace what I just said, would say, yeah, that's not the God, the Father of Jesus. That's not the heart of Jesus.

Therefore, I reject what this says. Now, aside from the fact that we do not have a scintilla of evidence from the New Testament that Jesus ever approached the text of the Old Testament in that way. I think it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding, not only of the seriousness of sin, the holiness of God, but the reality that God is glorified when his holiness is demonstrated.

God was glorified in the destruction of the gods of Egypt. And most people are okay with that. Some are not, but most people are okay with it. Well, you know, pagan gods, okay, yeah, all right. But when it comes to this, no, I just, I can't go that far.

But what you need to understand is, think about, and I wasn't aware of what the reading was going to be this evening, but think about what happened in the reading this evening, Brother Callahan read for us.

You have the destruction of the altar to Baal. There were all, there was already syncretism taking place. I don't know how God could have been any clearer in expressing the detestable act of idolatry.

And in fact, idolatry in that form is more detestable to God than when the pagans do it in ignorance. The people of Israel knew better. They were actually joining this together with the worship of God.

You've got the Baals over here, and then you go to the tabernacle and you offer your sacrifices. And it's a, it's a, it's a fundamental denial of the supremacy of Yahweh over his people and over his creation.

And so when that takes place, yes, God delights to prosper his people, but God likewise delights to cause them to perish and to destroy them in justice. Now you say, no, wait a minute, no, it can't, it can't mean that because of what is said in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel that, that God takes no pleasure in the death of the sinner.

But that's why we have addressed that in the past, those particular texts in Jeremiah and Ezekiel where you have parallel texts there. And both of them are dealing with a proverb that had become popular amongst the people of Israel about eating the, the grapes and the children's teeth being set on edge.

And the idea was that Israel was resisting the call to repentance on the part of the prophets by saying, oh, we're just, we're just being punished for what our parents did. This isn't really about us.

We don't, we don't need to be the ones repenting because God is punishing us. You know, our parents were the ones that ate the grapes, but our teeth are set on edge. We're the children. And so we don't need to respond to the prophetic message of repentance.

And each one of those texts, the point was, no, the call for repentance comes to you, your generation. You can't do anything about your parents, but you are called to repent. You can't do anything about what your ancestors did, but you can stop worshiping the gods that they taught you to worship.

You can, in fact, engage in repentance. You can do what God is commanding you to do. You are going to be held responsible for so doing. And so the idea is the soul that sins will die. In other words, this, this message is coming to this generation.

Stop trying to dodge the message that's coming to you. So many people would take that and say, well, you know, this, this couldn't possibly, this couldn't possibly mean that the God will delight over you to make you perish and to destroy you.

But you see, God is fulfilling his covenant promises here. It was his covenant promise to bless. It was his covenant promise to curse. And in both, he is demonstrating his holiness. His holiness is what is in view in these things.

And so you have to deal with the text. It's there. You can't just rip it out and say, it doesn't fit. I don't like it. I don't like what it means. It's very clear. It's a direct correlation. The Lord delights as the covenant God to prosper you.

The Lord delights to destroy you. In both, he is being just in these things and he delights in justice. Aren't we glad? That the Bible doesn't stop at the end of the book of Deuteronomy. When I think of, when I, when I think of what it would be like if that was the end of divine revelation, um, it would be a grim thing.

It would be a grim thing to consider because the law points us to our, a holy God and to our sin. But we need something more than that. We need something more than that. And of course we know what that, what that is.

I also wanted to make sure that your attention is drawn to one other verse. And I, I do this, um, it's, it's a little bit out of, uh, the context of the overall thrust, but I, I want to do this for your benefit, uh, because I have raised this subject to you in other contexts.

The final verse says, Yahweh will bring you back to Egypt in ships by the way about which I spoke to you, you will never see it again. And there you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.

Now reading this text in its context, it's not overly difficult to understand exactly what is being said. We've already seen the Egypt paradigm brought before us in regards to the plagues. And here you have a further fulfillment of that reversal of the Exodus.

This is a reversal of the Exodus. This is, if, if the, the first great blessing upon the people of Israel as a whole was their deliverance from Egypt, then here is the final element of that. And that is taking the people back to Egypt and they offer themselves for sale to their enemies as male and female slaves and in the ultimate rejection and the ultimate insult, but there will be no buyer.

They, they are not even on the level of their forefathers who had been in slavery in Egypt. The Egyptians won't even take them. Even when they offer themselves for sale into slavery, there will be no buyer.

This is very clearly in the context of Deuteronomy 28, the finale, you will go back to Egypt. You will offer yourself as slaves. No one will buy you. What a tremendous closing statement of the complete withdrawal of the blessings that had begun in the powerful deliverance of the people of Israel in the Exodus and the events of the Passover and the plagues and everything else.

The Abuse of Deuteronomy 28:68 by Hebrew Israelites

Well, why would I point your direction to that? Your, your attention to this? Well, this is a verse that has become key amongst this movement that is here in the Valley of the Sun. If you go, I guess I've been told, if you take the train, and so many of us do that, actually so many of us just have to dodge the thing in our cars, but that's another issue.

But if you go down to the station at 19th Avenue and Camelback, you will encounter a number of individuals there who claim to be Hebrew Israelites. And if you engage them in conversation, this verse will come up and they will say, see, see what the Bible says, see what you have missed all this time.

The Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, in ships, and they will tell you that Egypt is America. Egypt is America. And the ships were the slave ships of the 17th, 18th centuries. And that this is a prophetic verse that found fulfillment in the bringing of the slaves to America.

And some of them will go so far as to say that the slave traders were given special supernatural guidance. So the only people that they captured and sold into slavery in West Africa were the actual physical descendants of Israel, Hebrew Israelites.

Yes, they do believe that Hebrew, that the Hebrews were black, that Jesus was black, and that these were the people who were sold into slavery. Here in the United States. And hence, if you came over, if your ancestors came over on a slave ship, then you are of the people of Israel.

And here is the biblical proof. Now, you simply look at the text and you go, well, there is something interesting here. Why would this take place by ships? Well, you can go from Israel to Egypt by ship.

There is something called the Port of Alexandria, and it was one of the major ports of the ancient world. And there were many slave ships that went in and out of Alexandria. And the reason for mentioning ships, there's a lot of commentators that have speculated on the reasons.

Could it be that it wouldn't be via the same land route that they had taken because that would involve crossing the Red Sea? And extensions of grace and the man and all that stuff. So all that whole journey, which showed the grace of God in miraculously providing for his people.

No, you can't do that. God's not going to miraculously provide. So there has to be a direct route, and that is by ships. And there is some evidence of some of the people of Israel being, we certainly know that Jeremiah ends up in Egypt.

There are a number of Jews who end up in Egypt. And undoubtedly there were some who ended up in Egypt as slaves in some form or another. But the point is that this is a reversal of the Exodus. And the ultimate fulfillment of it is you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.

The point is that even when they are taken into exile, even taken back to the very place from which the Exodus had brought them, they will encounter failure even there in accomplishing their desires. They want to be sold into slavery and they can't.

There will be no buyer. It's fascinating to see people turn America into Egypt, first of all. And focus upon the literal fulfillment of the word ships and then skip the end of the verse, which says there will be no buyer.

Because it's painfully obvious that the Africans who were brought to America in the slave trade had buyers. And that was the whole point. That was the whole problem. And so the utilization, especially of texts like this, unfortunately, we could fill weeks and weeks worth of sermons on the abuse of the scriptures by various cultic groups down through the years.

You know, Joseph Smith managed to find himself in the book of Exodus. And the British Israelites do the same thing that the Hebrew Israelites do, just with a completely different conclusion. And there's always a way, if you are not concerned about honoring the text and really understanding what it would have meant to the people to whom it was written, there's always a way to pervert and to change the scriptures.

But this is a way that is really, we're seeing only over the past couple of decades, the formation of a whole new cult group. So, if you've ever wondered what it would have been like to observe the days of Joseph Smith or Charles Taze Russell or anything like that, well, here's sort of an example of it in our own day in the urban areas of major cities, the perversion of texts such as this here in Deuteronomy 2868.

The Law, Sin, and the Need for Christ

And so, in conclusion, what can we say? Well, when we think about what God's word says to us concerning his law, certainly, as we have struggled with difficult texts, over and over again, we have been driven back to a recognition that God is God and we are not.

That God is holy and he gets to define what holiness is, we do not get to define those things. But I hope, especially in looking at a text like this, what has come into your mind over and over again is the greatness of the redemption which is ours as the Christian people who cling to Christ Jesus.

We emphasized, when we studied the book of Hebrews, the centrality of the sacrificial work of Christ and the voluntariness of his condescension to give himself. And here we have more of the background of that, the holiness of God, the need to fulfill his law.

So much of that is lost upon so many today. So many believers have a view of the cross that is so shallow and so sentimental because they have not first heard the law thunder forth from Mount Sinai. What they've heard is Sigmund Freud.

What they've heard is psychology. What they've heard is a easy believism. And so they end up with a very, very shallow view of what Christ accomplished. Have you ever wondered how people can just have Jesus as an add-on?

You know, I'll sort of add Jesus on to all the other things that I'm doing. Once you realize the totality of what scripture teaches in regards to God's holiness and his wrath against sin, then you must understand that Jesus's sacrifice had to be perfect and powerful, or there is no hope for any of us.

If what he did was only did something to help us along, it's not enough. We need a Savior who saves. And that's why we need to rejoice in the gospel. There is no conflict between having a high view of God's law and the message of God's grace.

In fact, the two go hand in hand. For the higher and more biblical your understanding of the law of God, the more you are going to cling to and absolutely rejoice in God's amazing grace. Let's pray together.

Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for its revelation of your fierce holiness and your wrath against sin. Help us never to avoid these texts. Help us never to become accustomed to them.