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Walk in Obedience to God
Walk in Obedience to God

Deuteronomy 28:1-68
Key Verse: 28:9

¡°The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in obedience to him.¡±

Since it has been a few weeks since we have looked at the book of Deuteronomy, I think we need to take a few moments to review. In chapter 27, we had Moses giving instructions for the Israelites once they had entered the land and taken possession of it. In these instructions, Moses commanded that the Israelites build a pillar, coat it with plaster and write the words of the law on it. Then he told six of the Israelite tribes to stand on Mt. Gerizim to bless the people for being obedient to the Law and six tribes to stand on Mt. Ebal to curse the people for disobedience. In chapter 27 it doesn¡¯t mention anything about the blessings that would come from the people¡¯s obedience, but it does mention 12 things that the people would be cursed for if they did them. It is interesting to note that chapter 27 gives 11 verses to describe the things that will bring curses on the people, but it offers no verses to describe the things that will bring God¡¯s blessing. The reason for this is because there is only one thing that results in the blessings of God following us wherever we go. The way we can live under God¡¯s blessing is very simple, we must live according to His words; i.e. we must live lives of obedience to him.
Chapter 28 follows up on the theme of chapter 27. That is, chapter 28 talks in more details about the blessings and the curses that will come about because of the Israelites decision to follow God¡¯s law or not to follow it. Chapter 28 speaks of the blessings that will come with obedience to the law first, but then goes into much greater detail about the consequences of disobedience. The order and structure of this chapter tells us something significant about God. First, and most importantly, God wants to bless us. God wants us to obey Him so that he can pour out His blessing onto our lives. At the same time, He wants to clearly warn us of the consequences of disobeying His will. I believe that He goes into such great detail in describing the curses that will come from disobedience because God want His chosen people to avoid sin at all costs. God has called us to be His chosen people in this generation, so I pray that He will be with us today and open our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can hear His message through the study of this passage.
First, blessings for obedience (1-14). In these first few verses of this long chapter, Moses describes the blesses from God that will result from the Israelites obeying the word of God. Most of the blessings described here are very general. That means, they don¡¯t say exactly what God will do for each person who decides to follow God¡¯s law, they just say that they and the work of their hands will be blessed by God. Many people would like to see more specific details in these blessings, and so there are some people who take it upon themselves to tell us exactly what God meant by saying that He will bless those who obey Him. These people preach what many know as the prosperity gospel. Prosperity gospel preachers say that God¡¯s heart¡¯s desire is to bless His people and see that they succeed in everything they set their hands to do. I believe this to be true, but the preachers of the prosperity gospel forget to add in two very important facts when they preach. First of all, they almost never mention that God¡¯s blessing is promised in response to man¡¯s obedience to God. They say that God¡¯s blessing is a result of simply claiming what God has promised us is already ours. In other words, all we have to do is say that God¡¯s blessing is mine and somehow, we get it. This is crazy because it puts man in the place of God (which I will explain a little bit later) and it completely neglects the second fact that all of the prosperity gospel preachers forget. That is, as Isaiah says, ¡°For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,¡± declares the Lord. Prosperity gospel preachers don¡¯t believe this. They think they know exactly what God¡¯s blessings are and how we can get them. But do they?
Let¡¯s take a look at what the Bible has to say about this. Look at verse 1. ¡°If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.¡± The first thing that we must pay attention to is that any blessing from God comes after obedience to His commands. And it is not just any type of obedience. Verse one says ¡°If you fully obey the Lord your God. The King James version says, ¡°If you diligently obey¡¦¡± and the ESV say ¡°if you faithfully obey¡¦¡± Sometimes we might obey someone grudgingly or because they have some type of power over us. This type of obedience never leads to full or diligent or faithful obedience. It just ends up with a persondoing needs to be done with the least amount of effort required. This is not the type of obedience that is required by God. God is looking for willing obedience that he can bless. In verse 47, when Moses is describing the curses, he also describes the type of obedience the Lord is looking for. Look at verse 47. ¡°Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity.¡± The type of obedience the Lord is looking for is joyful and glad obedience. Joyful, because we know that all good things come from God. Glad, because we know that God¡¯s wants to give us all these good things. If we are joyful and glad as we obey the will of God, then we can obey him fully, diligently and faithfully. Otherwise we just go through the motions and obey like a robot or a slave which God does not want, nor will He bless.
If we obey God fully, diligently, faithfully, joyfully and gladly, what can we expect from God. The end of verse 1 tells us. ¡°¡¦the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.¡± This is a remarkable promise, but again it is not necessarily what the prosperity gospel preachers will have you think it is. They want you to think that your life will be trouble free and all the riches and honor that your heart desires will be fulfilled. But this is not what the Bible teaches about being set above all nations on earth. In fact, if we look at the great men and women of the Bible, we always see that their lives were full of trials, disappointments and hardship, yet they have been set above all the nations on the earth because we know all about them thousands of years after they lived. Can any of you in this room tell me the name of your great, great grandfather or grandmother? Probably not. But all of you know who Abraham was. Was Abraham¡¯s life easy. No. He had to leave everything he was familiar with and go to the land that God would show him. There he would face famine, war, living as a foreigner, and the nagging problem of having no son. Then when he got the son that God promised him, God asked him to sacrifice that son. Abraham obeyed God in everything and God placed him above all nations. Likewise, his great grandson Joseph face terrible trials, but he never gave up diligently obeying God. In the end, God placed him above all nations. King David has a very similar story. So do Esther and Ruth. And if we go to the new testament, think of Paul¡¯s story or any of the disciples. But if you want the best example, of course we have to look at Jesus. No other life in history has been so full of trials, hardships and disappointments, and yet no other person has been set so far above all the nations.
Verses 3-8 tell us a little about the blessings that will flow from God to those who fully obey him. Look at verse 3-6. ¡°You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.¡± These are all very general blessings, which means that they are a little bit unclear. What does it mean exactly that we will be blessed in the city and the country or blessed when we come in and when we go out? What these verses are saying is that if we fully commit to obeying the word of the Lord our life will always be under the blessing of God. It doesn¡¯t matter where we are – in a city or in the country – it doesn¡¯t matter what part of our life we are talking about – our family life or our material wealth – or what we are doing with are life – are we coming or going – every part of our life will be blessed by God.
Then, the question becomes what does it mean to be blessed by God. Does it mean, as the prosperity gospel preachers tell you, that you will have all the health, wealth and fame that your heart desires. I don¡¯t think so. I think to be blessed by God is to know Him and to come into a deeper relationship with Him. I can¡¯t think of any better definition. The more we come to know God, we come to realize that every good thing comes from him and we begin to realize that those good things are not the things the world holds dear. The good things in life really have nothing to do with wealth, fame or even our health. The good things in life have to do with our relationships with others and our personal relationship we have with God. In fact, our personal relationship with God is where all good things must come from. It is God who gives everything to us, and therefore knowing this is a blessing in itself. Moreover, if we realize that God is the creator of everyone, we can then love them and build relationships with them as well. Again, if we think of the great men and women of the Bible we can see that their true source of blessing had nothing to do with their physical or material well being, it had everything to do with their personal relationship with God. Abraham believed that even if he sacrificed his only son, God would still somehow keep His promise to him. Joseph believed that even though he had to suffer through slavery and imprisonment, God meant it for good and the saving of many people. David trusted fully in God as his king chased him around for 10 years trying to kill him. David¡¯s physical life was miserable, but his heart was rejoicing in the Lord his God and he felt most blessed. Paul was the same way. He suffered beatings and imprisonment often, but he could write to the Thessalonians and say ¡°Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God¡¯s will for you in Christ Jesus.¡± Paul¡¯s relationship with God was a true source of blessing, not only for himself, but everyone he came into contact with. I believe that our relationship with God is the true source and meaning of God¡¯s blessing, but it goes beyond this. Verses 7 and 8 go into a bit more detail saying that God will give His servants victory over their enemies and success in everything they set their hands to do. I believe that we can see this in the Bible as well if we go back and look at the people I have mentioned in this passage.
Now that we have gotten this far, we must ask ourselves why God wants to bless His obedient people. Let¡¯s look at our key verse and verse 10 together. ¡°The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the Lord your God and walk in obedience to him. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will fear you.¡± First of all, God wanted to establish the Israelites as His people. God wanted them to be His representatives on Earth. In order to do this, the Israelites had to obey God. It is the same for us today. I believe that God is calling us to be His holy people set apart from the others of this earth to represent Him to the world. This means that we can¡¯t live any way we choose, we must live in obedience to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In order to live in obedience to God we must know who He is and how He wants us to live. The only way we can do this is through Bible study and prayer. We cannot just think about how to live a good life, because this will never meet God¡¯s standard. God¡¯s standard is found in the book that we are studying today, and His plan for our life is known only to Him. In to know the standard, we must study the Bible and in order to know God¡¯s plan for our life we must pray. If we begin there, obedience can and will follow. If we begin anywhere else, we cannot expect to live in obedience to God and under His blessing.
When we live in obedience to God, the people around us will see this. The Bible says that the people living around the Israelites would see this and fear the Israelites. I think this was meant to be a healthy fear of the Israelites. They wouldn¡¯t fear Israelites because of who the Israelites were, but they would fear them because the people would see that the Israelites were the people they were because they lived under the blessing of God. In fact, they wouldn¡¯t be fearing the Israelites, they would be fearing the God that protected and blessed them. In the same way, by our obedience to Him, God wants to set us apart as His holy people in this generation so that others may see our lives and want to come to God as well.
Verses 12 and 13 tell us that God¡¯s blessing doesn¡¯t just stop with our knowing Him and having a deeper relationship with him. These verses tell that God wants to pour out physical blessings on us as well. He wants to make us prosper and to be the leaders in this world. But we must be very careful not to let these blessing from God take the place of God in our hearts. Remember Abraham. When he received the one blessing from God that He really wanted, God wanted to make sure that that blessing had not taken the place of God in Abraham¡¯s heart. Likewise, our material blessings and our positions in this world cannot take the place of God in our hearts.
Now I want to think about verse 14 for a moment. Look at verse 14. ¡°Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them.¡± Here God warns His people not to turn aside from His commands either to the right or the left. God says that they would do this if they decided to follow other gods. This got me thinking about man¡¯s nature, because I don¡¯t think many people today would say that they aren¡¯t following God¡¯s law because they are following some other god. In fact, many people today say that they are complete atheists and don¡¯t believe in any god at all. And yet verse 14 implies that people turn away from the law of God to follow other gods. How can an atheist follow another god that he doesn¡¯t believe in? This is where original sin and the inherent sinfulness of man comes in. If you go back and carefully read the story of the fall of man, you will see that nature of man¡¯s first sin is that we wanted to be like God knowing good and evil – that is we wanted to be our own god. This is the nature of all fallen man. So if anyone decides to disobey the commands of the true God, even if they claim to be an atheist, they are really deciding to follow another god. All sin is disobedience to God because humans want to follow another god, be it an idol, the sun, moon or stars, or simply ourselves and this is where the curses come in. I¡¯m not going to talk about all the curses listed in verses 15-68, I¡¯m just going to say that they are all a direct result of disobeying our creator¡¯s plan for our life. God is perfect and His creation was perfect also until man decided that they wanted to be their own god. When they did this the curse entered the world and we are still living under it today. The good news is that God has provided us a cure for that curse in Jesus. All we need to do is go to Jesus and follow Him back to the kingdom of heaven. Of course that following requires that we Walk in Obedience to God.
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