Why Culture Changes, According to God - #NoMillennialDespair2020

The Book of Deuteronomy as a Window Into God’s Dealings

So, the Book of Deuteronomy is a great book. If you don't spend a lot of time reading Deuteronomy or learning about Deuteronomy, let me just make a recommendation that this year that you prioritize Deuteronomy.

I started reading Deuteronomy more when I became kind of a more serious Reformed person. And I'm not to say that people ignore Deuteronomy, I don't think they do, but I think a lot about this book because, in my opinion, the Book of Deuteronomy gives us a really good window into how God deals with people.

And what's great about that is that we know that God doesn't change. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so if we can get a window into how God has dealt with people in the past, we know, pretty much, how God is going to deal with people in the present and in the future.

And so, that's my premise when I read the Book of Deuteronomy. That's what I'm looking for. And obviously, there's going to be some differences in the different dispensations that we're in, the different forms of the covenant of grace that we've seen.

We see a lot more clearly now than we used to. It's just that simple. But Deuteronomy gives us a perfect opportunity to evaluate what's going to happen in our future. How is the culture going to advance?

A lot of us are trying to engage the culture. We're having a culture war. People get all uppity about that kind of thing. And the reality is that culture is going to advance one way or the other. And it's not random.

That's the key. That's the real takeaway that I want you to understand from the Book of Deuteronomy. The progress that we make in culture is not random. And I think that some people understand this intuitively, but we've developed these theologies that kind of make it seem like it sort of is random, and it isn't.

God tells us what's going to happen. God tells us how things get better or how things get worse and why and all of that kind of stuff. And we would be wise to take heed and to listen to that so we know what's coming.

Blessings, Curses, and Covenant Unfaithfulness

I saw Marcus Pitman tweet. I don't have it pulled up, so I'll just kind of—this is just from memory. Marcus Pitman said that the thing that scares him about the coronavirus stuff—you know, and again, scare is a relative word.

I don't think he's cowering in fear or anything like that. But the thing that worries him about things like that, like these pandemics and stuff like that, is that he says that we're overdue for God's wrath.

We're overdue for God's judgment. And I completely agree with him on that. I think if you look at the Book of Deuteronomy and how he deals with nations, but also individuals. It's not just nations. He does deal with us corporately in a certain way, but he also deals with us as individuals in a certain way.

If you look at what the Book of Deuteronomy says, how God acts, you'd have to come to the conclusion that the United States is in trouble. There's going to be things that are going to happen that aren't going to be so good because of our covenant unfaithfulness.

Now, you'd be like, covenant unfaithfulness? What are you talking—what covenant is the United States in God with? Well, the reality is that the Book of Deuteronomy is super interesting because it shows us these historical sanctions that God gives to people.

So what you'll see here is he's telling Israel that if you obey—here's what it says—if you faithfully obey the Lord your God and you're careful to follow all his commands that I'm giving you today, the Lord God will put you far above all the nations of the earth, and these blessings will come and overtake you because you obey the Lord your God.

It lists out a bunch of blessings, and it includes economic blessings, it includes blessings for their livestock, it includes blessings for their health, for their food, for their stuff like that. It's all inclusive here.

It also includes military protection and things of that nature. So there's not a single part of life, of being a human being, that blessings don't come for. Like, even the things as little as your livestock, God's going to bless those as a result of your obedience.

We also have here curses. If you disobey God—here's what Deuteronomy 28, 15 says—if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following his commands and statutes I'm giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you.

And again, it's very inclusive. Your food situation is going to be cursed. Your economy is going to be cursed. There's going to be military conquests and things like that. All the way to your herds. Again, the livestock, even the littlest thing, your chickens, your cows, they're going to be cursed.

And so blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. And you say, okay, well, Adam, this is just Israel. Israel was in a covenant with God, but we're not in a covenant with God. These things don't apply to us.

And again, what you have to do is take the Bible as a whole. Yes, God had a special covenant with Israel, and he gave them a lot more information than he gave, say, Egypt or than he gave Babylon or things like that.

They had a lot less information, but God still holds them to his ethical standard. If you look at all the times in the Bible with the prophets, when you see God proclaiming woes against Egypt or woes against Babylon or woes against Assyria and things like that, it's all done in terms of these blessings or curses.

It's all the same stuff. He's saying, look, you guys did this wrong. You guys were morally bankrupt in these ways, and it's God's moral standard. It doesn't, it's not, he's not grading on a curve or anything like that.

It's not a different standard for Assyrians than it is for Israel. No, it's the same standard. He says, you guys did this, and these are the curses that are going to come upon you. And if you look at them, they overlap the curses that God promises in Deuteronomy to Israel.

And so it's not just Israel that gets these blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. It's not just Israel that gets these sanctions in history for based on their ethics. It's all of the nations.

And so there is no reason to think that that's changed today. In fact, if you look at the book of Revelation and it talks about the different curses that happen in the book of Revelation, again, it overlaps very well with the curses that we see here in the book of Deuteronomy.

It's just that simple. It's really just that simple. Now, another objection you might put forward is, well, you know, we see, so right now the United States is prospering economically. Have you seen the Dow?

And we're not being covenantally faithful in the United States. And that's true. But the thing is that Deuteronomy also talks about this kind of thing as well, because blessings can be a blessing or it can be a precursor to a curse.

Deuteronomy 8: Prosperity as a Test and a Warning

You see, here's Deuteronomy 8. He's talking about remembering the Lord. He says, follow every command I'm giving you today that you may live and increase and enter and take possession of the land the Lord swore to your father.

Do you see, so you see that cause and effect. Follow every command, ethically obey me, obedience to God, so that you may live and increase. So again, so that you may take hold of these blessings. Okay, so that's what he says to Israel.

And then he says this, listen to this. This is a few verses later. He says, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, your God, by failing to keep his commands, ordinances, and statutes that I'm giving you today.

When you eat and you're full and you build beautiful houses to live in and your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold multiply and everything else you have increases, be careful that your heart does not become proud and you forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.

Do you see, it's kind of a double-edged sword here, these blessings, because what God is saying is he says, look, I'm going to bless you. You're going to be economically prospering. You're going to have gold.

You're going to have silver. You're going to eat and you're going to be full. You're going to be satisfied. I'm going to give you beautiful houses. You're going to build them and you're going to live in them.

And it's going to be epic. And he says, but be careful, be careful. It's a warning because he knows when we're satisfied and we're fat and happy, when we live in a nice house, when we have more than we need, he knows that we become proud.

We become haughty. We kind of think, well, man, I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. And he knows we have a tendency to forget the Lord. And here's the reality. Like when we do that, we forget the Lord. We stop obeying him.

We stop considering him. And what happens when we stop obeying? Well, Deuteronomy 28 tells us there's curses for disobedience. Listen, listen, just a few verses later, he says, he says, he fed you in the wilderness with manna.

So he's talking about God when he, when he was providing for them, when they had nothing, when they had nothing at all, God provided for them. He's saying, remember that he fed you manna, which your fathers had not known in order to humble and test you so that in the end he might cause you to prosper.

So he's causing them to prosper. He says, you may say to yourself, my power and my own ability has gained this wealth for me. But remember that the Lord, your God gives you the power to gain wealth in order to confirm his covenant.

He swore to your fathers as it is today. If you ever forget the Lord, your God, and follow other gods to serve them and to bow and worship to them, I testify against you today that you will perish. Like the nations, the Lord is about to destroy before you were perish.

If you do not obey the Lord, your God. So you see, it's kind of a double-edged sword, this prosperity. And this is the point that I see personally, my opinion, the United States is in this period right now where we've got abundance, where we've got wealth, where almost everybody lives in a house that, that, that, that's so nice.

It couldn't even have been dreamt of back in the day where, where this, uh, verse came came forward. Most of us can go to the store and buy food whenever we need it. And even those who can't, there's food pantries where they can just gather food that they need without cost.

Most of us live a lot longer than they used to before. Most of us are relatively healthy. I mean, we've got prosperity here in the United States, but we are not obeying the Lord God. And so that's not actually going against the paradigm presented by Deuteronomy chapter eight or chapter 28.

You see, those blessings have made us forget that, that, that we need God every moment of every day. How true is that of your own life? But it's also true corporately. Those blessings have made so many of us forget.

And we think that we're invincible, that we have the power to get this wealth, that we're okay in ourselves. And what does God say here? He says, I testify against you today that you will perish like the nations that the Lord is about to destroy before you.

You will perish. So you see the sanctions that we get in history, whether we get blessings or curses, it's not random. It's, it's, it's, it's based on ethics. It's based on our morality. It's based on our obedience to God.

Ethics, History, and the Reformed View of Providence

And so that's why so many people like Marcus, for example, sees this coronavirus thing. And he says, well, no, I don't think anything's going to happen, you know, but the one thing that does give me pause is that we're in abject rebellion against God.

And this is the kind of pestilence that he promises for nations that rebel against him. We're overdue for that. We're overdue for that. See, the other option you have here, by the way, is so, so this is a very straightforward thing.

I think the Bible teaches this very, obviously, I think Deuteronomy is very clear. There are blessings for obedience. There are curses for disobedience, not only in our corporate lives as nations, but also in our individual lives.

We overcomplicate this though. So I think it's very clear blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. But what we like to, a lot of us have come up with this theology where it says, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

What you don't understand is the blessings and curses is completely random. It's completely random. So you could obey and get the curses or you could, you could disobey and get the blessings. And it has nothing to do with God's plan here in Deuteronomy eight, where he basically makes you fat and happy as a curse, essentially to eventually destroy you.

It has nothing to do with that. It's just completely random. These blessings and curses. I reject that. I don't think there's anything in the Bible that makes, makes me want to believe that maybe God wasn't random in Deuteronomy, but he's random now.

But you see, a lot of us have theologies that are actually even a little bit crazier than this, in my opinion, a little bit worse than this, where it's like basically the church in the church age today, we're going to get the curses no matter what we do.

So it's not even that it's random. It's just that we are now cursed. So, so, so all the blessings and curses in Deuteronomy, basically the church in the church age, the world is due for all the curses, no matter if we obey or not, no matter if we obey a lot or a little or not at all, it doesn't matter.

Those curses are coming. And our eschatologies kind of have been developed to, to, to, to make that make sense somehow, where we're just getting cursed no matter what. And that's not true. That is not true.

That's not the gospel message. There are, it's not curses, no matter what we do obey or disobey, or that doesn't make any sense at all. And it didn't make sense to John Calvin. This is like a lot of people might, this might sound a little bit strange because you haven't heard it said this way, blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience.

But, but this is, it hasn't always been like that. It hasn't always been like. Here's, here's a, here's an excerpt from, from John Calvin. When he preaches this, these are sermons that John Calvin preached on Deuteronomy 27 and 28.

And maybe you've heard this before. Maybe you haven't, but this, I mean, this is straight out of Calvin guys. Listen to this. He says, this is to be applied to all parts of our lives. For example, when a man wishes to prosper in his own person, that is, he desires to employ himself in the service of God and to obtain some grace so that he may not be unprofitable in this life, but that God may be honored by him.

Let him think thus to himself, Lord, I'm yours. Dispose of me as you will. Here I am ready to obey you. This is the place at which we must begin. If we desire God to guide us and to create in us the disposition to serve him so that his blessings may appear and lighten upon us and upon our person.

So it is concerning every man's household. So you see to Calvin, it wasn't just nations that were cursed and blessed based on their obedience. It was actually individual households as well. Down to the individual.

If you want blessings on your life, you should obey God. Now you might get trials and tribulations and things like that, that happened to you. No one's saying that you cannot get those. This is not health and wealth and prosperity where it's a formula.

If you just have enough faith, you'll everything good will happen to you. No, it's not like that. But obedience is required. There are sanctions in history. That makes sense. It's not like a random thing where randomly things happen to you that maybe they do.

Maybe they don't. Who knows? No, God works in a way that makes sense. He's revealed how he works. Listen to Calvin. Continue again. This is, I want to stress. This is John Calvin. This isn't Benny Hinn.

Okay. He says this, he says the same thing is true. Concerning cattle, food, and all things. For we see here that nothing is forgotten and God meant to make us perceive his infinite goodness in that he declares that he will deal with our smallest affairs, which one of our own equals would be loath to meddle with what he's talking about here.

He said he's preaching on Deuteronomy. Remember? And what he's pointing out is that God is God is involved in, is going to bless or curse all of the smallest details down to our cattle, down to our food.

All of the smallest details. Listen to what he says. He says, if we had a human friend, we would be very loath indeed and ashamed to use his help unless it were a matter of great importance. But we see here that God goes into our sheep folds and into the stalls of our cattle and of our oxen.

And he goes into our fields and he cares for all other things as well. Since we see him abase himself thus far. Shouldn't we be ravished to honor him and to magnify his bounty? What he's saying here is look, God, God is involved in like your lives in the most minute detail.

And, and, and so shouldn't that drive us to be like, wow, like, who am I that God's concerned with my cattle? I mean, who, who, who, who am I that God's concerned with my daily food? Who am I that God's concerned with, with, with, whether or not I have enough money?

What am I going to wear? What am I, where am I going to live? Like that should drive us to, to just want to honor God and everything and glorify God and everything and obey the Lord. I mean, what does God say?

How do you love God? How do you abide in the love of Christ? I bet you, if you ask that question, how do you abide in the love of Christ to 10 evangelicals? You'd get so many different answers, but the Bible tells us directly how to do this.

How do you abide in the love of Christ? You obey his commands. You do what he said and we can have faith or we can trust that God's sanctions in history. They're not random. It's not like we're going to obey him.

And all he's going to do in return is curse us, curse us, curse us, curse us. We, I mean, so many of our eschatologies guarantee that, that no matter what curses, that's, that's not how it is. It's not how it is.

Deuteronomy gives us a window into how God deals with people, not only nations, but also individuals. And so we can, we can trust God with that. That's, this is, this is, this is explaining his covenant.

This is explaining his relationship with us. We can trust that. We can trust that. And so when the fiery trial comes, the way we respond is we say, Lord, I mean, I know what I've done. I know about my obedience level in the past and I know I deserve worse, but Lord, let me still honor you in this.

Let me still obey you in these, in this time, even as I'm getting these, these, these, these, these trials that come my way, the sickness, this, this difficulty at work, this difficulty making ends meet, this difficulty with my house, whatever it is.

No Despair for Those Who Obey God

This is the thing you want to engage the culture. You want to change the culture. Obviously we have to speak truth. Obviously we have to believe true things. Obviously we need to spread true things, but what it boils down to according to Deuteronomy is ethics.

We've got to obey God. We've got to obey God. And God gives us a list of the kinds of blessings that he will bestow upon our nation. If we do obey. And so, I mean, that, that, that, I think that's encouraging to be perfectly honest with you.

This might sound like a downer because the United States is not obeying, but, but, but I think this is encouraging because again, this is how God deals with people. And so if our nation is disobeying God, but your family, your town, your community is obeying God, this still applies to you.

You see what I'm saying? This still applies to you. That's why there is no despair. That's why there is no despair because God has revealed to us. God saw fit to, to, to, to, to, to condescend to our level and show us how he deals with us.

And our job is to believe him and to trust him and, and, and to do what he tells us to do. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.