Revering the Word
Deuteronomy 11 An introduction to blessing and cursing.
Good morning everyone. We are in Deuteronomy chapter 11 this morning. And it begins by reflecting back on the fact that God has, remember that God has brought you out of Egypt and here is just 70 of you. And now you're about to enter the Promised Land and you have become more numerous as the stars of heaven. God has provided for you. And then beginning in Deuteronomy 11, you shall therefore, because of the blessing that God has had. Had upon you, you shall love the Lord your God and always keep his charge, his statutes, his ordinances and his commandments. Know this day that I am not speaking with your sons who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, and his signs and his works, which he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to all of them. And to all his land. And what he did to Egypt's army, to its horses and its chariots, when he made the water of the Red Sea to engulf them while they were pursuing you. And the Lord completely destroyed them. And what he did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place. And what he did to Nathan and Aberum and the sons of Eliaab and the sons of Reuben, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them among all of them. But your own eyes have seen all the great works of the Lord, which he did. Now what Moses is saying is this next generation that's entering the Promised Land, they were children when they were coming out of Egypt. And their parents aren't getting to enter the Promised Land, but they are, but they were there and they remember the great things that God had done for them. And even the punishment that God did to them when they were disobedient. And he's like, you ought to remember and ought to follow me because you remember all that God has done. You know, that's such a good word. And I mentioned this and something that I think about a lot. You know, we should always remember what God has done. You know, sometimes in a particular season, it may seem like God's not doing maybe what you would want or what you would hope. But God is not, our faith in God is not just in what he's doing in a moment-by-moment situation. Nothing never can change what he's done. I refer to it that nothing that's happening can ever change what's happened. So in a moment of time, in a season of time, it may seem like what's happening right now is not what I would want. But that doesn't change what's happened. God has still performed miraculous deeds all throughout history. And now we live on this side of the cross. And Jesus got off that cross and came out of the tomb and revealed himself alive again and ascended to the Father in Heaven and has given us His Holy Spirit. And regardless of whatever happens to me in the future, all of that has happened and nothing can ever change what has already happened. And we should reflect back and know that He is God because of all that He's done. You shall therefore keep every commandment which I am commanding you today so that you may be strong and go in and possess the land into which you are about to cross to possess it. And that you may prolong your days on the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. In the book of Deuteronomy, we have a continual reminder that the blessing upon us, the favor that God has for us, is going to be based upon how we obey Him. And you can see how the Pharisees would get to be strict religious observers of the law because of the book of Deuteronomy and how much emphasis is placed on honoring it. But the foundation of why we obey God is first of all because we love Him and because we believe in Him. And as a result of loving and believing Him and trusting in what He has given us, we now seek to honor what He has said because we trust Him. We believe in Him. We want to honor Him. And we believe that it's going to go better for us just as God has said when we do honor Him. To get to the point where you get meticulous and you're so focused on observing the law that you are not doing it from the motive of love and honoring obedience, but your stead just becoming legalistic. That's not what God was after. It's the wrong emphasis. The right emphasis is to honor and revere God. And as a result, to honor and revere His Word, but not to put legalism ahead of our love and reverence for Him. And that's kind of where they got mixed up at times. Verse 10, "For the land into which you are entering to possess it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came where you used to sow your seed and water it with your foot like a vegetable garden, but the land into which you are about to cross to possess it and land of hills and valleys drinks water from the reign of heaven. A land for which the Lord your God cares, the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it from the beginning even to the end of the year." And it would have been interesting to see if, let's just say, Israel was obedient and honored God and continued to honor Him and didn't mix and start having false places of worship and worship Baal and all kinds of things when they entered the Promised Land. It very much appears that there would have been just a continual blessing upon that land and they would have had God's favor, but instead when they got there, they didn't continue to honor Him the way they have. Now we're not quite to that part of the journey in our three-year journey of the Bible and we'll see that as we go through, you know, 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles. We'll see the history of God's people and that in their failure many times to honor God, but God desired for His blessing and favor to be upon them. And in a sense, God is going to bring that about in the New Jerusalem. He's going to bring a blessing down from heaven one day, but they did not honor Him in that season of history the way they should have. And as a result, His blessing is left to wanting for a period of time and they're going to suffer the consequences of their disobedience. You know, just like they were supposed to learn from their history, looking back and even what happened over the last 40 years, and they were rewarded for obedience and they were not rewarded or cursed if you want to put it that way when they disobeyed in the desert. And we can look at now all of Israel's history in the Old Testament and see how their lives, how they fared based on what they did, and we should learn from that history. We should see that there's blessing in following God and there's cursing when we don't, when we turn away from Him. Verse 13, "It shall come about if you listen obediently to my commandments, which I command you today, and look at, and here's the right motive, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul. That He will give you the rain for your land and its season, the early rain and the late rain that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil. He will give grass in your fields for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied." Now listen to this, this is such a theme of Deuteronomy in a good word, beware that your hearts are not deceived and that you do not turn away from and serve other gods and worship them, or the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and He will shut up the heavens so that there will not be no rain, so there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit and you will perish quickly from the good land, which the Lord is giving you. It's going to be a test and God is wanting them and He's wanting us to honor them. Verse 18, "You therefore, you shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall teach them to your sons, talking to them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land, which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them as long as the heavens remain." Let me back up a bit so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land, which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them as long as the heavens remain above the earth. You know, it's interesting when you look at that passage that we just read and it talked about, "Remind them to your sons and you shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates." The importance of remembering God's Word, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just encourage you in what you're doing right now and taking in the Word of God and keep doing it daily. Start your day with God and remind yourself of Him and what He has said and what He desires every day, and I'm telling you, I've been doing this for many years. I became a believer in 1996 as I teach this podcast, it's 2024, so 28 years into following God and early on in my journey, I began reading through the whole Bible and reading it slowly, typically at a chapter a day, and essentially I've been doing that for my whole walk with the Lord. And it's been a blessing to me to daily study a chapter of God's Word. I want to encourage you that this method of going through the Word of God has worked well for me, and I know that it can work well for you too. I want to encourage as many people as possible to make a commitment to start their day with God and His Word and daily remind themselves of Him and His Word, and I believe it'll go well with them. I believe it'll be a blessing for all who do that. The other thing is, as I talked about, write them on your gates, I'm actually at a home, at a friend's place. My wife and I are traveling and might have heard their dogs a second ago, but it's kind of neat. There's a Christian family, so there's a lot of Christian verses on the wall and Bible verses and just pictures about God and His promises, and that's it's a good thing to do. It's a good thing to have that in your house and remind yourself of the Lord. Just as what's been talked about here, it's good and right to remember the Lord. Verse 22, "For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and hold fast to Him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. Every place in which the soul of your foot treads shall be yours, your border will be from the wilderness to Lebanon and from the river, the river you frayed is as far as the Western Sea. No man will be able to stand before you, and the Lord your God will lay the dread of you and fear of you on all the land on which you set foot as He has spoken to you." What a grand promise and in this particular season of history God was asking Israel to take over the promised land and He was going to bless them with that land and that was part of His promise to Abraham and He was going to come good on His promise and on His covenant to Abraham and He wanted them to obey Him when they got there. So this is a specific blessing for this specific time in history, this isn't saying that because you are a Christian right now that everything is going to go perfect for you, it's all going to go great, God is going to give you every possession and every part of land. We can't take an Old Testament thing and adopt it as though everything is being said to us, this is being said to those people at that time. Now that does not mean that the blessing of God is not upon His people and that you are the family of God and I believe there is favor and blessing on those who obey God and honor Him. But this specific promise for that land was said to these people here and unfortunately they are not going to do a great job in honoring God once they get there. Verse 26, "See I'm setting before you today," and this is a theme of Deuteronomy, we'll see this later in the book but it's being introduced now. "See I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse, the blessing if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God which I am command you today and the curse if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God but turn aside from the way which I am command you today by following other gods which you have not known. And there is a blessing and curse in the Old Covenant law, the Mosaic law and it's going to be talked about again in Deuteronomy that if you follow God's law you're going to be blessed but if you don't you're going to be cursed. That parallels pretty well following God in His Word, if you follow God's Word there's going to be greater blessing when you get away from God and when you follow after sin and dishonor God there's going to be a curse. Now here's the thing, Jesus if you didn't know He took the curse, that's what's amazing for all the Old Testament people and us who did not honor God rightly, God made a once in final sacrifice in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ took the consequence. He took the curse for people's disobedience to the law upon Himself so that we could be forgiven of the curse and receive the blessing of God and receive the blessing that was given to Abraham's family. That's one of the amazing things that Jesus did is He died to take the curse upon Himself because we as a people, Old Testament people and even today we were we braided. We all have sinned and falsed over the glory of God and that sin creates a separation and in the Old Testament there needed to be a sacrifice and in the New Testament Jesus is the once in final sacrifice you can't bring another one and Jesus Christ took your curse. He took mine, if you believe in Him, He died to forgive us of our disobedience to the law but now He's asking us again to live to honor Him, to live to obey Him and to live to please the Lord. It's just that now we have someone who died to forgive us of that curse of the law, Hallelujah, we become part of the family of God. It shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, that you shall place the blessing on Mount Gerism and the curse on Mount Ebel and they are not across the, are they not across the Jordan west of the westward toward the sunset in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah opposite of Gilgal beside the oaks of Morah. For you are about to cross the Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God has given you and you shall possess it and live in it and you should be careful to do all the statutes and the judgments which I am studying before you today. Another reminder of what to do, you know it's really interesting, I'm not going to give this to you in a great deal but there's this blessing on Mount Gerism and a curse on Mount Ebel and this became confusing for some people, the Samaritans, you might remember the Samaritans in the New Testament. They felt like the mount of blessing instead of being in Jerusalem should be on Mount Gerism and they adopted their faith around that. Jesus corrected them and said no, Jerusalem is where God's temple was and the special Mount, Mount Moriah, Mount Zion, but the Samaritans got mixed up by this one passage about Mount Gerism as though it was supposed to be the central place of worship. It comes up later in the New Testament but nonetheless, a great reminder today, there's blessing in obeying God and there's cursing for not but Hallelujah, praise the Lord, Jesus took our curse. Now be grateful to him, grateful for the forgiveness of sins, grateful for the Holy Spirit and now live to honor and please the Lord and I believe you will see better days ahead when you do. God bless you all.