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The People of the Lord
The People of the Lord Deuteronomy 27:1-26 Key Verse: 27:9b-10 “You have now become the people of the LORD your God. Obey the LORD your God and follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.” Last week we finished a section of Deuteronomy in which Moses gave the Israelites various laws that they were to follow when they entered the promised land. These laws were God’s way of setting His people apart from the rest of the nations, so that they could be for Him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation – a people who could reveal God’s glory to the nations living around them. Some of the laws seem overly harsh or strict, and others seem to have very little, if anything, to do with us today. Never-the-less, these laws are God’s truth for setting apart a people for Himself, therefore we must study them to understand the spiritual reasons God gave such laws to His people. In today’s passage, Moses gathers the people and begins to tell them the consequences for following the law that God had given them, or not following that law. There would be blessings for obedience, but curses for disobedience. The blessings for obedience were to be pronounced from Mt Gerizim which faced Mt. Ebal were the curses for disobedience were to be proclaimed. The locations of these mountains are of significance to Christians today because of what occurred there in Jesus day. More on that later. Today’s passage focuses largely on the curses for disobedience that would be pronounced from Mt. Ebal. There are twelve representative sins that are given to show what type of disobedience would bring about the curse of God. Because of the focus of the curse of God and the nature of some of the sins listed, many people feel uncomfortable studying this passage. But, again, we must remember that this chapter is all a part of God’s truth for His chosen people. As God’s chosen people in this generation, we must understand God’s truth and know how it is applicable to our lives today. May God bless our study of this passage and open our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can always live under His blessing in the land He has promised for each of us. First, Moses calls the people together and urges them to keep the commandments God had given them (1-10). Look at verse 1. “Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Keep all these commands that I give you today.” It is important to note here that it is not just Moses alone who assembles the people and urges them to keep the commands that God had given him. If it had just been Moses urging the people, many of them may have grumbled in their hearts that this was just Moses way of keeping the people obedient to his idea of what it meant to live a righteous life. However, since the elders of the people were with Moses, this would have helped convince the people that this was indeed God’s law and not just Moses own thoughts. They were respected members of the community who affirmed that this law came from God and therefore, the people should be careful to obey it completely. Likewise, it was important that Moses did not just rely on the priest and Levites for this purpose, because the law made provisions for their well-being. If Moses had used them to confirm that the law came from God, they could have been seen as biased observers and their confirmation of the law a little bit suspect. Therefor, together with the elders of the people, Moses first urges the people to keep all the commands of the law that they had been given. Obedience is a matter of first importance in God’s sight. Even God’s own son had to learn obedience because He was also a man. All men must learn how to obey God. The Bible tells us in Hebrews chapter 5 that “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” As Christians, we must keep our eyes firmly upon Jesus and learn from Him how we can live a life of obedience in this generation. Through Jesus example, we can see that we cannot do this on our own, but we must constantly be offering prayers and petitions with fervent cries to God to help us obey His commands for our lives. In order to help them obey the commands of the law, Moses knew that they would need a constant reminder of just what those commands were. Therefore, when they had crossed the Jordan and had some respite from their enemies, the first thing they were to do was to set up a type of pillar made with large stones and cover them with plaster. Into the plaster they were to inscribe the words of the law. Human beings are very forgetful, so God knew that the Israelites would need a visual reminder of the law if they were to keep it once they started to enjoy the good things of the Promised Land. The nature of man has not changed in the past 4000 years. Sinful human beings easily forget that we need to live obedient lives before God. This is especially true, when things are going well and we are enjoying the milk and honey this life has to offer. We can easily forget, that we are God’s chosen people who are called to live a certain way before Him. Like the Israelites, God has provided a written reminder of His law for us. There reminder was a large pillar of stone with the words of the law written on it. The Israelites reminder could not be carried around with them, however, our reminder is the Bible which each of us can carry around from place to place, so we are without excuse. Where were the Israelites to build this reminder? Verse 4 tells us that they were to place these stones on Mt. Ebal, the mountain of the curse. Why were they to build it there and not on Mt. Gerizim, the mountain of blessing? I think it was to remind the people of just how prone they were to not keep these laws. If we read through the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, we can see that ever since the Israelites were brought out of Egypt, they were given to complaining and rebelling against Moses and God’s law. Even at Mt. Sinai, they gave into the temptation to abandon God and they created for themselves their own God’s who would go before them. For forty years they wandered through the wilderness, and time after time we read about how they grumbled, complained and even outright rebelled against God and His law. Human beings are sinful, and we want to live our live our own way. We do not want to submit to God’s law any more than the Israelites of Moses time wanted to submit. Therefore, God instructed them to build the pillar with the law written on it, on the mountain of curse as a reminder to them of the seriousness of disobedience. For sinful human beings, it is far easier to disobey the law and fall under God’s curse than to obey the law and live under His blessing. Next to the pillar, the Israelites were to also build an altar. This altar was to be made of uncut stones. In other words, they were just to find stones that were lying around and pile them up to make this alter. They were not to cut these stones in anyway and in that way make the alter look beautiful. God did not want them to try to make the altar beautiful by their own ideas. God had given them detailed plans for the one altar they were to use at the spot that He would chose to put His name, but any other altar that He instructed them to build, they were not to adorn in any way. It was to be a simple affair as the altars were that Abraham made many years before when he first entered the Promised Land. On this altar they were to offer two types of sacrifices. The first were to be burnt offerings to the Lord their God. They were first instructed to worship God, but, next, they were instructed to offer fellowship offering for themselves. Look at verse 7. “Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the LORD your God.” I think we have here and example of something that many people, both religious and non-religious overlook. That is that God’s wants His people to live happy lives full of rejoicing. This does not necessarily mean that we should rejoice in the way or in the things of the world, but we should always live rejoicing before God for the blessings and the salvation He has provided for us. Paul understood this well, even though he lived an extremely difficult life and faced many sufferings. Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. God’s will for us in Christ Jesus is not that we go around very serious all the time trying to keep others from enjoying this life in any way. No! God’s will for us is to rejoice before Him all our days for all the blessings He has given to us. After Moses and the elders urged the people to follow God’s law carefully, Moses and the Levites began to address the people. This time it was the Levites who were invited to Moses side to address the people. It was because the Levites were to be responsible for the spiritual lives of the people after Moses died. It was now time to tell the people the consequence of their actions. There would be blessings for obedience to the law, but curses for disobedience. However, before Moses started speaking about this, he had one final thing he needed to make clear to the people. Look at verse 9. “Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, ‘Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the LORD your God.’” God had chosen these people, but many of them still were not entirely sure of this. They should have been after seeing everything that God had done them, yet some of them still needed to be told this by Moses. They were God’s chosen people – they were His people. They needed to have this as a clear identity so that they could live as God’s people before the eyes of the rest of the world. It was only with this clear identity as belonging to God would they be able to keep all the laws and decrees that Moses had given them from God. Likewise, we often need to be reminded that we are God’s chosen people in this generation. If we are to live as God’s chosen people according to His way of life and not the way of the world, we must have a deep conviction that we are God’s personally chosen people. Like the Israelites, we must be silent and listen and we must know that now we have become the people of the Lord our God. Once we were our own man or our own woman. Now we no longer belong to ourselves, we belong to God and we are His chosen possession. Only with this clear conviction can we live as His children in this generation. But what exactly does it mean to live as God’s people? Look at verse 10. “Obey the LORD your God and follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.” It means that we must live a life of obedience to His will. Once again, we see that it comes down to a matter of obedience. Many Christians today don’t like to think about this, they would rather focus on the “freedom” that we now have in Jesus. What they don’t realize is that freedom and obedience are not mutually exclusive. I think Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, said it best in his song of praise after John was born. While prophesying about God fulfilling the promise of the coming of the Messiah, Zachariah says why the Messiah was coming in Luke 1:74-75. “to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” The Messiah did come to free us from our enemy, the devil, and He did give us freedom by doing this. But what did He give us this freedom for? He gave it to us so that we can “serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.” If we are to serve anyone, let alone God, we must obey what they command us to do. If we don’t obey them, we are not serving them, we are either rebelling against them or trying to rule over them. Obedience to God’s will and His commands and decrees is central to the life of any Christian. As always, Jesus is our perfect example of how to live as a child of God. Jesus lived in complete submission and obedience to God’s will. Likewise, we must learn to humbly submit our lives to obediently following God’s will. Second, blessings are to be proclaimed from Mt. Gerizim and curses from Ebal (11-26). Moses instructed the Israelites, when they had crossed the Jordan and taken possession of the land, to split themselves into two groups. The tribes of Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin were to stand on Mt. Gerizim, while the tribes of Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali were to stand on Mt. Ebal. The group on Mt. Gerizim were to proclaim the things that would bring the Lord’s blessing upon the people, and the group on Mt. Ebal were to proclaim the things that would bring God’s curse upon the people. One thing that I find particularly interesting about the mountains of blessing and cursing is their location and how they fit into the gospel narrative and point to Jesus. These two mountains were in the center of Israel with two small but significant towns between them. The first town was the town of Shechem. It was at Shechem that Jacob bought a parcel of land from the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for 100 pieces of silver (Gen 33-19). Later, just before he died, Jacob gave this land to Joseph, whose bones were later carried back to Israel and buried there (Gen 48:22). The second small town that was between these two mountains was a town called Sychar. It was in this town that Jesus met a sinful Samaritan woman to whom He wanted to give the gift of God that wells up to eternal life. This woman was living under God’s curse, because she had not kept the commands and decrees that Moses had given the Israelites and she was literally living in the shadow of the mountain of curse. Yet just across the valley was the mountain of God’s blessing. God’s blessing had shown up to her that day about 2000 years after Moses spoke about these two mountains. The law makes everyone live under God’s curse if they don’t keep that law perfectly. However, Jesus is the gift of God, who brings God’s abundant blessing to anyone who will accept Him. Verses 15-26 give us 12 representative sins that will bring God’s curse upon us. It is unclear why God chose to record just these 12 in this chapter – perhaps it is a representative number of twelve or maybe because these were 12 sins that might go undetected because of their secretive nature, I really don’t know. The last one, in verse 26 is interesting, because it seems to pretty much be a “catch all” for all the curses. “Cursed is anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out.” None of us can carry out the law completely, so we are all forced to live under God’s curse. Until, that is, we accept the one person who did completely fulfill the law; i.e. Jesus Christ. Jesus fulfilled the law for us and then He paid the price we should have paid for living under God’s curse. Only Jesus can offer us God’s eternal blessing. Why? It is because He, alone, is the only one living under God’s blessing and therefore, only He has this blessing to offer us. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life who offers us God’s blessing welling up to eternal life. Jesus sits in the shadow of the mountain of curse, waiting to take all those who come to Him to the mountain of God’s blessing. Today, we thought about the blessings and curses that God has placed in front of us as His chosen people in this generation. May God help us to look to Jesus every day and walk in complete humble obedience to His will so that can live and rejoice before Him on the mountain of blessing. |
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