We continue with the “You will reap what you sow” theme regarding blessing and cursing in the new land. In Christ we have all the fullness and the blessings of God.
Deuteronomy 28: Blessings for Obedience
1 "And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.
2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God.
3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.
4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.
5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
7 "The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.
8 The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
9 The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways.
10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you.
11 And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you.
12 The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.
13 And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them,
14 and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
Curses for Disobedience
15 "But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.
16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.
17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.
19 Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.
20 "The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.
21 The LORD will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish.
23 And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron.
24 The LORD will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
25 "The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away.
27 The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumours and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed.
28 The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind,
29 and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you.
30 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit.
31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it. Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, but there shall be no one to help you.
32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless.
33 A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labours, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually,
34 so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see.
35 The LORD will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.
36 "The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone.
37 And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away.
38 You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it.
39 You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them.
40 You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off.
41 You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity.
42 The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground.
43 The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.
44 He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.
45 "All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you.
46 They shall be a sign and a wonder against you and your offspring forever.
47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things,
48 therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand,
50 a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.
51 It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; it also shall not leave you grain, wine, or oil, the increase of your herds or the young of your flock, until they have caused you to perish.
52 "They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the LORD your God has given you.
53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.
54 The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left,
55 so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns.
56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter,
57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns.
58 "If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God,
59 then the LORD will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.
60 And he will bring upon you again all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you.
61 Every sickness also and every affliction that is not recorded in the book of this law, the LORD will bring upon you, until you are destroyed.
62 Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God.
63 And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
64 "And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
65 And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul.
66 Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life.
67 In the morning you shall say, 'If only it were evening!' and at evening you shall say, 'If only it were morning!' because of the dread that your heart shall feel, and the sights that your eyes shall see.
68 And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer."
Deuteronomy 29: The Covenant Renewed in Moab
1 These are the words of the covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.
2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land,
3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders.
4 But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.
5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet.
6 You have not eaten bread, and you have not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the LORD your God.
7 And when you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle, but we defeated them.
8 We took their land and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites.
9 Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
10 "You are standing today all of you before the LORD your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel,
11 your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water,
12 so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the LORD your God, which the LORD your God is making with you today,
13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant,
15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.
16 "You know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed.
17 And you have seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them.
18 Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit,
19 one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, 'I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.' This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike.
20 The LORD will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.
21 And the LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.
22 And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick---
23 the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath---
24 all the nations will say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?'
25 Then people will say, 'It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt,
26 and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them.
27 Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book,
28 and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.'
29 "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Things to think about…
In Dt 28:1-14 the blessings for Israel are listed out. Israel was called to be a light and a witness to the nations and as such was to be an example to all the nations through their obedience to YHWH, vs 10. These same principles apply today. Be aware as Christians our witness comes through contentment and not through the desire for more which is covetousness – which is idolatry. This is always the risk with personal loans, there is a high likelihood of being in danger of the curse regarding borrowing listed in vs 12 – to the banks.
The curses of Egypt would come upon Israel in their new land Dt 28:27 if they did not obey the Lord. Sin has a terrible habit of following us. We get sick of jobs, wives, husbands, children, churches and keep trying other options. The problem is us folks. Where we go, our sin follows. Just because we have moved out of Egypt into Canaan it does not mean all will go well with us. Faith without obedience is hypocrisy. Pray that we deal with our greed/discontent firstly in ourselves before we point the finger at others.
The horrors listed in Dt 28:52-57 are prophetic in a sense. When the towns of Israel were seized by the Assyrians and Babylonians these atrocities of cannibalism, etc did occur. They are recorded in the book of 2Kings 6. In a modern sense there can be a famine in the church where there is very little bible teaching or love. As such the community is not transformed and the church remains ineffectual. Pray for our church and the church in Australia that we continue to see spiritual blessing and abundance as we follow Jesus with grace and truth.
When Satan uses people, even the world does not want us, Dt 28:68. Therefore, choose a life in Christ! Chapter 29 is simply a reminder that the Lord will keep his promises for blessing and cursing for those about to enter Canaan. They were to remember that they were kept in the wilderness and had escaped Egypt’s slavery. This chapter is prophetic as to what would happen to Achan and the Israelites due to sin being in the camp in Joshua 7. It is also a very quick reminder that the Lord would keep His promises. We can see the Lord’s hand of blessing only remains on us as believers as we trust and obey “for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey”.
Re-read Dt 29:29. Please don’t think that you can or should know everything about the Lord.
Vision Point
CBC’s Vision :- To be a growing biblical church community, significantly influencing our city and beyond, through intentional outreach, fulfilling our mission.
Questions for Cell groups
Sunday’s sermon, “Tithes and Offerings” came from Deut 26 by Ps Jay.
1. Tithes and offerings were a part of blessing and obedience for the children of Israel as they entered the land of Canaan. How are they to be seen as an act of worship, Dt 26:10.
2. What is your understanding of tithes and offerings as a Christian. As we are no longer under OT law, what is your understanding of tithing as a Christian?
3. We are called to be a light to the world, Mt 5: 14. Part of that is building up the church to give resources to share the gospel. Give a testimony of how the Lord has blessed your tithing/offering in sharing the gospel of Jesus.
4. Pray that our giving can achieve our Vision/Mission as a church.
Prayer Points
1. Pray for Victoria and the rise in Corona virus cases. Restrictions are maintained for that state.
2. We return to church with 2 services starting on the 12th July – one at 8:30am and one at 10am. Pray for the implementation through this next phase.
3. Pray for wisdom and clarity with some restrictions are being lifted next month.
4. Continue to pray for our government for wisdom and economic management.
5. Sunday’s fb live messages and for Kids church. The message this week – “Blessing and abundance” Deut 28 – Pr Jay.
6. Our online Chuwar Kids at church program – that our kids still feel connected to church and love worshipping Him.
7. Pastoral care. Pray people feel connected in this isolation period. Been great catching up with people at the Bean Redeemed café.
8. Church finances to meet our expenses and to put a roof over our café.
9. Our City and Country – Pray for revival over our city and the leadership of our country even through these challenging times. Pray especially for people to be stable with respect to mental health.
Praise Points.
1. Dylan Brandazzi who was at Recharge Youth a few years ago has been involved in a traffic altercation. I heard from his family that he is healing well. Praise the Lord.
2. Jesse Baxter is gaining strength in his hands, praise the Lord.
3. This wonderful rain.
4. Riots slowing down in America.
5. Restrictions being lifted – cell groups can now meet up.
6. Finances being maintained and donation to Café roof. Thankyou! New temporary cover put on this week.
9. Streaming and fb live being done very well by the technical team. Thanks Doug, Dan, Jesse and Peter. Thanks worship team.
10. Australia’s response to the infection has been blessed. Continue to pray for wisdom with respect to our economy.
11. Praise the Lord churches are functioning well in this environment and the gospel is going out in the media.
12. Encouraging online comments – the church is still functioning well and people are being cared for.
Announcements
1. We are going to two services starting on the 12th July. First service will start at 8:30am. The second at 10am. Only the 10am service will be live streamed.
2. Pray about offerings to help with putting a roof over the café. Our temporary white shade has come to the end of its life. $6k required for a new roof. Architect currently drawing up plans.
3. Cell groups can meet up – Ask for details as to how and what is required.
4. New church bank details bsb:- 704 913 and Acc number:- 4000 4388 1
5. Kids Church now streamed live at 9:00am every Sunday morning via CBC’s fb page. Will be run in the house for the 10am service starting on the 12th July.
