Steve Webb: God knows how forgetful people are.
This is the Lifespring! One Year Bible coming to you from
Riverside, California, and podcasting since 2004, I'm your
OG Godcaster, Steve Webb. It's The Law Monday and we'll read
Deuteronomy 26 through 28. The website is lifespringmedia.com,
and contact information will be at the end of the show. Before
we read, let's pray. Our heavenly Father, we love you and
we thank you so much for your Word. We thank you for revealing
yourself to us through your Word. Teach us today I pray in
Jesus' name. Amen. All right, are you ready? Let's get
started.
Deuteronomy, chapter 26. When you go into the land the Lord
your God is giving you as your own, to take it over and live in
it, you must take some of the first harvest of crops that grow
from the land the Lord your God is giving you. Put the food in a
basket and go to the place where the Lord your God will choose to
be worshiped. Say to the priest on duty at that time, “Today I
declare before the Lord your God that I have come into the land
the Lord promised our ancestors that he would give us.” The
priest will take your basket and set it down in front of the
altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall announce before the
Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down
to Egypt with only a few people, but they became a great,
powerful, and large nation there. But the Egyptians were
cruel to us, making us suffer and work very hard. So we prayed
to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he heard us. When
he saw our trouble, hard work, and suffering, the Lord brought
us out of Egypt with his great power and strength, using great
terrors, signs, and miracles. Then he brought us to this place
and gave us this fertile land. Now I bring part of the first
harvest from this land that you, Lord, have given me.” Place the
basket before the Lord your God and bow down before him. Then
you and the Levites and foreigners among you should
rejoice, because the Lord your God has given good things to you
and your family. Bring a tenth of all your harvest the third
year (the year to give a tenth of your harvest). Give it to the
Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows so that they may eat
in your towns and be full. Then say to the Lord your God, “I
have taken out of my house the part of my harvest that belongs
to God, and I have given it to the Levites, foreigners,
orphans, and widows. I have done everything you commanded me; I
have not broken your commands, and I have not forgotten any of
them. I have not eaten any of the holy part while I was in
sorrow. I have not removed any of it while I was unclean, and I
have not offered it for dead people. I have obeyed you, the
Lord my God, and have done everything you commanded me. So
look down from heaven, your holy home. Bless your people Israel
and bless the land you have given us, which you promised to
our ancestors—a fertile land.” Today the Lord your God commands
you to obey all these rules and laws; be careful to obey them
with your whole being. Today you have said that the Lord is your
God, and you have promised to do what he wants you to do—to keep
his rules, commands, and laws. You have said you will obey him.
And today the Lord has said that you are his very own people, as
he has promised you. But you must obey his commands. He will
make you greater than all the other nations he made. He will
give you praise, fame, and honor, and you will be a holy
people to the Lord your God, as he has said.
Deuteronomy, chapter 27. Moses and the elders of Israel
commanded the people: “Keep all these commandments that I give
you today. When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the
Lord your God is giving you, set up some large stones and coat
them with plaster. Write on them all the words of this law when
you have crossed over to enter the land the Lord your God is
giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the
Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. And when you have
crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I
command you today, and coat them with plaster. Build there an
altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any
iron tool on them. Build the altar of the Lord your God with
fieldstones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your
God. Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and
rejoicing in the presence of the Lord your God. And you shall
write very clearly all the words of this law on these stones you
have set up.” 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. Obey the Lord your God and
follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.” On the
same day Moses commanded the people: When you have crossed
the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless
the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin.
And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses:
Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali. The Levites shall
recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice: “Cursed
is anyone who makes an idol—a thing detestable to the Lord,
the work of skilled hands—and sets it up in secret.” Then all
the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who dishonors
their father or mother.” Then all the people shall say,
“Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary
stone.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is
anyone who leads the blind astray on the road.” Then all
the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who withholds
justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then
all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who
sleeps with his father’s wife, for he dishonors his father’s
bed.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone
who has sexual relations with any animal.” Then all the people
shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his
sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his
mother.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is
anyone who sleeps with his mother-in-law.” Then all the
people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who kills
their neighbor secretly.” Then all the people shall say,
“Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who accepts a bribe to kill an
innocent person.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”
“Cursed is anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by
carrying them out.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”
Deuteronomy, chapter 28. “If you fully obey the Lord your God and
carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the
Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the
world. You will experience all these blessings if you obey the
Lord your God: Your towns and your fields will be blessed.
Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring
of your herds and flocks will be blessed. Your fruit baskets and
breadboards will be blessed. Wherever you go and whatever you
do, you will be blessed. “The Lord will conquer your enemies
when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction,
but they will scatter from you in seven! “The Lord will
guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill
your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in
the land he is giving you. “If you obey the commands of the
Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish
you as his holy people as he swore he would do. Then all the
nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by
the Lord God, and they will stand in awe of you. “The Lord
will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors
to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous
livestock, and abundant crops. The Lord will send rain at the
proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will
bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but
you will never need to borrow from them. If you listen to
these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today,
and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head
and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at
the bottom. You must not turn away from any of the commands I
am giving you today, nor follow other gods and worship them.
“But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not
obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today,
all these curses will come and overwhelm you: Your towns and
your fields will be cursed. Your fruit baskets and breadboards
will be cursed. Your children and your crops will be cursed.
The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. Wherever
you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed. “The Lord
himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in
everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for
doing evil and abandoning me. The Lord will afflict you with
diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about
to enter and occupy. The Lord will strike you with wasting
diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching
heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These
disasters will pursue you until you die. The skies above will be
as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as
iron. The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land
into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are
destroyed. “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your
enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but
you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of
horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses will be
food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no
one will be there to chase them away. “The Lord will afflict you
with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch,
from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will strike you with
madness, blindness, and panic. You will grope around in broad
daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you
will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed
continually, and no one will come to save you. “You will be
engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You
will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will
plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. Your ox
will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a
single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you,
never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your
enemies, and no one will be there to help you. You will
watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your
heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them.
A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops
you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant
oppression and harsh treatment. You will go mad because of all
the tragedy you see around you. The Lord will cover your knees
and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered
from head to foot. “The Lord will exile you and your king to
a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you
will worship gods of wood and stone! You will become an object
of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which
the Lord sends you. “You will plant much but harvest little,
for locusts will eat your crops. You will plant vineyards and
care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the
grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. You will grow olive
trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive
oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. You will have
sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led
away into captivity. Swarms of insects will destroy your trees
and crops. “The foreigners living among you will become
stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker. They
will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will
be the head, and you will be the tail! “If you refuse to listen
to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has
given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until
you are destroyed. These horrors will serve as a sign and warning
among you and all your descendants forever. If you do
not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the
abundant benefits you have received, you will serve your
enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left
hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord
will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly
until he has destroyed you. “The Lord will bring a distant nation
against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on
you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not
understand, a fierce and heartless nation that shows no
respect for the old and no pity for the young. Its armies will
devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They
will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or
lambs, and you will starve to death. They will attack your
cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you
trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack
all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.
“The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so
severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and
daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you. The most
tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own
brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. He will
refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh
of one of his own children—because he has nothing
else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your
enemy will inflict on all your towns. The most tender and
delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much
as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the
husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter. She will
hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne,
so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing
else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your
enemy will inflict on all your towns. “If you refuse to obey
all the words of instruction that are written in this book,
and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the
Lord your God, then the Lord will overwhelm you and your
children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be
intense and without relief, making you miserable and
unbearably sick. He will afflict you with all the diseases of
Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. The
Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is,
even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you
are destroyed. Though you become as numerous as the stars in the
sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to
the Lord your God. “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in
causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find
pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you
are about to enter and occupy. For the Lord will scatter you
among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other.
There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your
ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! There among
those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the
Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail,
and your soul to despair. Your life will constantly hang in the
balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will
survive. In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’
And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For
you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around
you. Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a
destination I promised you would never see again. There you will
offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one
will buy you.”
In today's reading, the children of Israel are about to enter
into the Promised Land, but God has a message for them through
Moses. Over and over again, in these chapters, we read the word
“obey” or a variation on that command. And in chapter 27,
they're instructed that the first thing they're to do when
they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land is to set
up a monument of stones on which they're to write the entire body
of the law and build an altar upon which they're also to write
the law and make burnt offerings. Why did God have them
do this? Because God knew how forgetful the people were. The
monument was placed there as a reminder of their crossing over
the Jordan River into the land promised to them. The law was
written as a reminder. The altar was a reminder. Every time they
looked at the monument or the altar, they would remember this
day and how God delivered them, how he fulfilled his promise,
and what was required of them to continue to receive his
blessings. God knows how forgetful people are. Over and
over and over again, he reminds his people of the importance of
obedience. He reminds them of the promises of blessings when
they obey and the curses promised if we don't. Of course,
God knew before the foundation of the world that men and women
would never be able to obey the law. And he was not surprised
when Adam and Eve sinned. He was not surprised when no one was
able to obey the law. So why did God even give the law if no one
would be able to keep it? Paul gives us the reason in Romans
7:7. He said, “...I would not have known sin except through
the law…” So the law was given in order that we would know what
sin is. And before God even began the creation of the
universe, he had a plan to save us. Jesus was always in the
plan. He was not Plan B. As we read in John chapter 1, “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made
through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not
comprehend it... “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
the Father, full of grace and truth.” So in the very
beginning, Jesus was a part of the plan to save you and to save
me. Jesus is the Word. He was in the beginning. He is the only
way that my transgressions, my sins, and yours, can be
forgiven. The law was given to show our need. Jesus came to
fulfill the need. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the
life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Beloved, we
are no different than the people who crossed over the Jordan
River. We are forgetful. That's why he gave us the Bible. That's
why it's important to be faithful and purposeful about
gathering with God's people. That's why we're encouraged in 1
Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing. We don't do
these things to earn salvation but to remember to stay close to
God. We can't earn salvation. Salvation is a gift given to us
when we invite Jesus into our lives as our Savior and our
Lord. He gives this gift because of grace or undeserved favor.
What do you think? Let me hear from you. Send a boostagram or
call the Lifespring Family Hotline or go to the comments
page or write an email. Tomorrow will be History Tuesday. We'll
complete the book of Nehemiah with the reading of chapters 10
through 13.
As always, I invite your comments and your questions.
Send a boostagram using a modern podcast app, or call the
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send an email to me at steve@lifespringmedia.com.
Thanks to the team: Sister Denise, Michael Haner, Scott
Snider, Jason Paschall, and Sister Brittaney. Jason Paschall
did today's show art. Beloved, thank you for inviting me to be
a part of your day today. I don't take it for granted. Shall
we do it again tomorrow? Can't wait. Until then, may God bless
you richly. My name is Steve Webb. Bye.
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