Revering the Word
Deuteronomy 28 Have you been redeemed?
Good morning everyone this morning we are in Deuteronomy 28 and I believe it is a significant chapter in understanding what Jesus Christ has done for us. Let's begin to take it in as they are on this side of the desert and Moses is forecasting the commitment that they are to have to the law, the Mosaic law, the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the laws of the Lord, the first five books of the Bible that they would obey what they have been taught through Moses coming from God and that if they do they'll be blessed and if they turn away and forsake the law and forsake God in doing so that they will be cursed. That's essentially what Deuteronomy 28 is. Let's take it in now. Now it shall be if you diligently, by the way, obey the Lord your God. Uncareful to do all his commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God. Bless shall you be in the city and bless shall you be in the country. Bless shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Bless shall you be your basket and your knitting bull. Bless shall you be when you come in and bless shall you be when you go out. The Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will come out against you one way and will flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to and he will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself so he was trying to gather a community of people that would be holy to him and obey him and be in unity with him and be his family as he swore to you if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. So all the people of the earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord and they will be afraid of you. The Lord will make you a bound in prosperity in the offspring of your body and the offspring of your beast and in the produce of your ground and in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open for you his good storehouses the heavens to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand and you shall lend to many nations but you shall not borrow. The Lord will make you the head and not the tail and you will only be above and you will not be underneath if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God which I charge you today to observe them carefully and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today to the right or to the left to go after other gods to serve them. So the first 14 verses of Deuteronomy talk about how God wants to bless his family and you know God, God did, God desired to bless his family Israel and that then they would be a blessing upon the nations around them going back to the original covenant that God began to make with Abraham back in chapter 12 and chapter 15 to multiply his family and to bless them so that they shall be a blessing and here he is reiterating as they are about to go into the Promised Land that if when you get there if you obey me if you will follow me you won't follow after God their gods if you will follow this old covenant this mosaic covenant that I've given you you're going to be blessed but he warns them ahead of time what's going to happen if they do not and let's take that in and then I'm going to summarize the the teaching and this is very significant today let's take it in now verse 15 but it shall come about if you do not obey the Lord your God to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I charge you today that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you curse shall you be in the city and curse shall you be in the country curse shall be your basket and your needing bull curse shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground the increase of your herd and the young of your flock curse shall you be when you come in and curse shall you be when you go out the Lord will send upon you curses confusion and rebuke in 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 the Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until he has consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it the Lord will smite you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and 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 the Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed so God is warning them ahead of time that if they're going to disobey it's not going to go well the Lord 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 the all the birds of the sky and to the beasts of the earth and there will be no one to frighten them away the Lord will smite you with the boils of Egypt and with the tumors and with the scab and the itch from which you cannot be healed the Lord will smite you with madness and with blindness and with 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 betrothed 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 will be torn away from you and will not be restored to you your sheep will 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 you will never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually but you shall be driven mad by the sight of what you see the Lord will strike you on the knees and the legs with sore boils from which you cannot be healed from the soul of your foot to the crown of your head the Lord will bring you and your king whom you said 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 whore a proverb and a taunt among all the people where the Lord drives you this is really quite remarkable and we're not finished with this chapter it is quite a lengthy one and God is forewarning them of the destruction that's going to come upon them if they don't obey and you know what's sad is that in Israel's history they in the future they do disobey they don't honor the Lord they have a season under Joshua when they take over the promised land where they do pretty well and you know David even though he made a lot of sins he was a man after God's own heart and although he was far from perfect he did end up ushering in then with his son Solomon a really special time in Israel's history where God did indeed bless them but Solomon ended up having wives and concubines and getting away from honoring God and when he died and his two sons took over after him they were at war with each other the kingdom became divided and Israel started a significant decline in their history and in their history of following God the northern ten tribes never really obeyed God again the two southern tribes had at times seasons of history in Jerusalem and to the south where they would have kings that would honor the Lord only to be followed by kings who would usher in all kinds of false worship so ultimately both the northern and southern kingdom now Israel divided because of their sinfulness they forsook God and worshiped false gods and did all that they were not to do you know there's a story that you know eventually we'll get to in as we go through the whole bible here where a king by the name of Josiah they found his one of his servants found the bible the Old Testament scrolls in the temple in the temple treasury they were being stored there meaning they weren't even looking at them like they weren't following the word of God at all like time had gone on wicked kings had men in charge and they weren't they mean it was like totally lost from the land and then Josiah's servant found the the Old Testament scrolls in the temple and he came out and read them and Josiah tore his clothes and said oh my goodness we're we've totally forsook God we need to get back to following him and he tried to do reforms and did do reforms but in God's eyes it was already too late they had failed to follow God and they were going to be destroyed just as God is saying in this chapter and then you know two different armies came in first the Assyrian Empire and then the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar and took over the promised land ultimately it was king Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylon's that invaded the southern kingdom which lasted longer probably because at times they got things right but then even that kingdom was destroyed and the Jerusalem was destroyed and they got deported to Babylon and God in his great mercy you know later on in biblical history allowed people to come back although it wasn't their country anymore they never again had a country by the way not until 1948 when Israel came back into its land which is quite remarkable that we had a country that wasn't a country government-wise they didn't control the land for you know thousands of years and then now they got back to their land and you see Israel in the land today but still having its enemies around it but it's quite a remarkable story in in that way God still has future plans as we read in the Bible for that land and for those people but they need to come to Jesus you need to recognize Jesus as Lord and savior so this is God's forewarning and it just shows the waywardness of God's people that despite them having the written warning of God as to what they were to do and not to do mankind with its sinful endemic sin problem from Adam that didn't get cured in the days of Noah or after the days of Noah they still fell away from God let's continue finishing out the chapter and then I have some significant things to say about the new covenant and about Jesus so let's continue verse 38 you shall bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little for the locust will consume it you shall plant and cultivate vineyards but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes for the warm will devour them you shall have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil for your aloes 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 and you will be the tail you might recall that you know all of this is the opposite of the blessings that were mentioned however there's much longer content here to the cursing than there was the blessing I believe the blessing was 14 verses and here we are in verse 44 so we've gone 30 verses of the cursing God's wanting them to know what's going to happen if they disobey verse 45 so all these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed because you would not obey the lord your god by keeping his commandments and his statutes which he can manage you they shall become a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever because you did not serve the lord your god with joy and a glad heart for the abundance of all things we we should have right we should have worshiped god with joy I mean think of how he brought them out of Egypt and provided for them and part of the sea and then gave he's gonna give them the promised land and and yet even despite the blessings of god and the miracles god that he did people tend to turn away and you know that's the same today isn't it I mean think about it god's done all this stuff throughout history it's all recorded in his book but most of the world is living as though god he's not even real and they don't even know what god has done so that's the same kind of turning away that's happened now then is it's it's it's a part of our world now people are forsaking god and haven't even turned to him or his son Jesus Christ verse 48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the lord will send against you in hunger and thirst in nakedness and in the lack of all things and he will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you the lord will bring a nation against you from afar from the end of the earth as the ego swoops down a nation whose languages shall not you shall not understand a nation of fierce countenance who will have no respect for the old nor sure favor to the young moreover it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground till you're destroyed who also leaves you no grain new wine or oil nor the increase of your herd or the young or your flock until they have caused you to perish this very well you know is is foretelling of the destruction of this of largely the Babylonian empire but maybe even in conjunction with the Syrian empire that came in before that it shall beseege you in all your towns until you're high in fortified walls in which you trusted instead of trusting in god come down throughout your land and it shall seced you in all your towns throughout your land which the lord your god has given you then you shall eat the offspring of your own body how sad is that and the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the lord your god has given you during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you I do believe there's some historical evidence that that happened when people were starving in Jerusalem at the besieged when their enemies came in the man who was refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wifey cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain so that 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 I know this is kind of hard to take in all this cursing but I encourage you to to go through it with me to the end and then see what Jesus Christ has done see the good news that we have today so that he will not even give one of them the flesh of his own children which he will eat since he has nothing else left during the siege and the distress by which your enemies will oppress you in all your towns the refined and delicate women among you who would not venture to set the soul of her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter apparently you know just the horrific conditions of the situation is going to really bring about what's not good in mankind and toward her afterbirth which issues from 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 verse 58 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 the Lord your god then the Lord 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 are afraid and they will cling to you also every sickness in every plague which not written in the book of this law the Lord 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 heaven just as he promised Abraham because you because you did not obey the Lord your god that's why you're going to become few it shall be come about that as the Lord delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you so that the Lord would will delight over you to make just as he delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you so the Lord 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 the Lord will scatter you among all the 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 or your own fathers have not known among those nations you will find no rest and there will be no resting place for the soul of your foot but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart following eyes in 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 that it were evening meaning you just want the day to be over and at evening you shall say would that it were the morning because of the dread of your heart which you dread and for the sight of your eyes which you see the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships by the way about which I spoke to you and 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 well as if it's sad that they won't even be able to become slaves because there is no buyer so wow that is a lot to take in the blessings and curses of the old covenant god is the author of life he's the creator of life he's the creator of mankind and he wanted to create a community of peoples that would honor and obey him and love him and he'd create this beautiful community but it was contingent upon them obeying him and he's letting them know ahead of time that if they disobey everything that I tried starting isn't going to work out just as it kind of did with Adam after he got kicked out of the garden and then in the days of Noah everyone was corrupt all the time and God saw the corruption of the earth and that their only thought and inclination of their heart was only evil all the time and he flooded the earth and started over through Noah and sadly mankind just has this problem with sin this struggle with sin and as a result they become under the curse of the law because they cannot and do not live up to God's commandments so then they end up being cursed because of the fact that they disobey God now what's really interesting as we move forward if we went to the book of Jeremiah Jeremiah promised that one day there would be a new covenant you might recall this I'm going to make a new covenant not like the covenant that I made with them when they came out of Egypt the one that they broke you might recall that Jeremiah said let me let me turn there and just read it straight from the word of God all right here it is Jeremiah 31 verse 27 behold days are coming declares the Lord when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast as I have washed over them to pluck to break down to overthrow destroy and to bring disaster so I will watch over them to build up to plant declares the Lord so he's got a future hope for them in those days they will not say again their fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge but everyone will die for his own iniquity and each man who eats the sour grapes his teeth will be set on edge now verse 31 probably could have started here behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt my covenant which they broke although I was a husband to them declares the Lord so this is what we've been talking about they broke that covenant but God's going to make a new one one day but this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord I will put my law within them and on their heart and I will write it and I will beat their God and they shall be my people they will not teach each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying no the Lord for they will all know me for the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord now listen to this for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more hallelujah now this is the promise of the new covenant it's going to be a new agreement that God's going to make and it's not going to be the old covenant that we just read the covenant of blessings and curses because they were under this curse but in this new covenant a sacrifice is going to be made and this sacrifice is going to free us of the consequences of the curse meaning the curse is no longer going to be on those who enter into the new covenant by faith and therefore they can walk in the blessing and be the family of God and be forgiven of their sin now this was written Jeremiah you know some 600-ish years before the coming of Jesus now I want to take you to another passage a couple of them but we're going to go to Matthew and let me find it all right so here we are in the last night of Jesus's life by the way what day is it it's Passover and I want to get into that whole teaching today I've taught it many times you'll hear it if you go through these podcasts with us but you know Jesus gets together with his guys on Passover the same day the blood of the lamb saved them from Egypt many years ago and now they are you know they sacrificed a lamb and are having a lamb for a meal on Passover and they're in the upper room and it's on that special day and while they were eating Jesus took some of the bread and after a blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said take eat this is my body and when he had taken the cup and given thanks he gave it to them saying drink from it all of you for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many or the forgiveness of sins now do you remember what Jeremiah said in this new covenant I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more Jesus Christ is ushering in the new covenant beginning here with the Last Supper and culminating in a couple of things one his death in that same day on Good Friday because when you'd usher in a new covenant you'd make a sacrifice just as Moses had a sacrifice and and sprinkled the blood when he made the first covenant Jesus is the sacrifice the final lamb of God he sacrificed himself to usher in the new covenant that was long awaited through Jeremiah to forgive us of our sin of violating or being under the curse of the law because we couldn't live to it and now Jesus is giving us the new covenant hallelujah where our sins are forgiven and remembered no more and because of that we can have a relationship with God because we're not under the curse of the law anymore now the absolute fullness of all this is going to come when Jesus brings in the you know the the millennial reign and ultimately the new Jerusalem but it begins now with the church who believed in him who have the forgiveness of sins and I want to take you to one other passage and I I hope you have stuck with us all the way till now because this is really important what we're about to see right now so let me pick this up we're going to be in Galatians chapter three and we're going to pick it up in verse six and we're going to read through at least verse 14 maybe further but picking it up in Galatians chapter three verse six so remember even so Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him his righteousness do you remember that that Abraham was made right by faith before there ever was a law because he believed in the promise of God verse seven therefore be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham see now if you have faith in Jesus you get grafted into the family of Abraham and the righteousness that came by faith before there ever was a law because Abraham was made right by faith before the Mosaic law ever came into fruition so in a sense those who have faith in Jesus go back to the blessing of being part of the God's family through Abraham before there ever was the blessings and curses of the Old Testament law which they were unable to follow let's keep going the scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles the nations that's us by faith just as Abraham had faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying that is before the law he preached the gospel before the law to Abraham saying all the nations we blessed in you seeing now anyone can come to faith in Jesus anyone can be saved from the curse of the law anyone can become part of the family of God Abraham's family through faith in Jesus through faith in him that's how we become part of God's family so then those who are of faith are blessed see we we are now under the blessing not the cursing those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham the believer as Abraham believed and now as we believe in Jesus we fall into the blessing of God's family and we're no longer under the curse of the law because Jesus Christ died to save us from that curse that's what we're about to see verse 10 hallelujah for as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse see if you try to follow God through following the law you'd be cursed because just like the Old Testament people couldn't live up to it neither could we we struggle in living up to the perfection under the law and here's what it says in verse 10 cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law to perform them so when the law came if you disobeyed it you'd be under its curse but now something's happened to set us free from that curse hallelujah now that no one is justified by the law before the law is excuse me now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident like you can't go back and even as they struggle to obey the law you can't go back to trying to follow God through the law and think you're going to be made right it's not going to work and now he's going to quote in Galatians here in Old Testament passage the righteous man shall live by faith and that's what's important today is that you have faith in Jesus however the law is not a of faith on the contrary he who practices them shall live by them meaning if you're going to try to get to to God through the law you better practice and do it perfect but listen to what it says hallelujah this is where we've been headed all day Christ redeemed us Christ paid the price we were under the penalty of the law but a price had to be paid to set us free from the curse of the law and Christ paid that price in his life he gave his life to pay the price to redeem us from the consequence of not living to the law to free us from the curses of the law so that we could be forgiven and become part of the family of God listen to this Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us hallelujah oh my goodness Jesus Christ went up on that cross and took our curse he took our penalty for our disobedience of living up to the law for it is written cursed as everyone who hangs on a tree in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles or to the nations so that we would receive the promise of the spirit through faith hallelujah Jesus Christ went up on that cross he ushered in the new covenant where there's the forgiveness of sins he took the curse of the law upon himself so that we wouldn't have to be under the curse and he ushered us back into Abraham's family and just as Abraham was made right by faith and given righteousness by faith now when we believe in Jesus we are seen righteous before God forgiven by God because we have faith in Jesus Christ he paid our penalty he took our curse and now we're under the blessing church you're under the blessing of being part of the family of God and you're not under the curse anymore and we should be so overwhelmingly grateful that Jesus Christ paid the price and paid the curse for us took the curse upon himself that now we live to obey God because we want to thank him we want to we live to please him because of what he has done for us hallelujah there was a reward I believe hallelujah in you sticking out the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 to get to the unbelievably good news that Jesus Christ died to forgive you of everything you've done now place your faith in him live for him live to honor him hallelujah because you have been forgiven and the curse has been removed and and you know today I want to say this in this day and age and all the way until we get to the new Jerusalem one day in God's future dispensations people are still under the curse so if you haven't accepted Jesus you're still under the curse you have to believe in him to have him take your penalty for you and that's going to exist until one day as it says in the very last chapter of the Bible that the curses there's no longer any curse it's completely gone because those who are going to be in the new Jerusalem and are all going to be God's family and no one's going to be under the curse anymore but today people are still under the curse until you accept Jesus so believe in Jesus believe upon him get grafted into the family of God get your sins forgiven get allow Jesus to take the curse he wants to take it for you hallelujah what a great God we have what great forgiveness we have hallelujah praise the Lord we are now part of the family of God forgiven what what gratefulness fills our hearts for that thank you Jesus amen