In Jason Dohm's sermon on Deuteronomy 28:30-44, the speaker explores the severe warnings and curses God decrees for disobedience, emphasizing their relevance as examples for modern believers. The sermon underscores that God is impartial, warning that the same judgments He applied to others can apply to His people today. Dohm identifies eight themes from the text: disruption of normal patterns, loss of control, broken generational links, recall of God's gifts, unbearable pressure, universal applicability of judgment, revoked worship freedoms, and external reproach. The sermon draws parallels with New Testament teachings, urging believers to consider the severity and goodness of God and to respond with faith and obedience. Emphasizing the justice and mercy of God, the sermon calls for self-examination, repentance, and a renewed commitment to living under God's guidance.

Deuteronomy 28, starting at verse 30. You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its scrapes. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.

Your donkey shall be violently taken away from before you, and it shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fall with longing for them all day long, and there shall be no strength in your hand. A nation whom You have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually. So you shall be driven mad Because of the sight which your eyes see, the Lord will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.

The Lord will bring you and the King whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone and you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you. You shall carry much seed out of the out to the field But gather little in for the locust shall consume it You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes for the worms shall eat them you shall have olive trees throughout all your territory but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil for your olives shall drop off you shall beget sons and daughters but they shall not be yours for they shall go into captivity Locusts shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land. The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you and you shall come down lower and lower. You shall lend, he shall lend to you but you shall not lend to him.

He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail." Let's pray. Lord, we bow ourselves before You. How good it is to have a perfect, eternal Word to put ourselves under. So prone to think wrongly about things, we're so prone to chase after the wind, but your Word would set all these things right if we would be governed by it. Oh God, today we desire to be a people governed by it.

We pray, Lord, that you would make plain the things that you desired for your people to know and act on when you gave us this text. We ask for your blessing on this time that you would plant seeds deep in the earth of our hearts and that there would be a harvest of a hundredfold. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. So I continue to draw on phrases from Romans 1 as we talk about the curses. We're in verses 30 through 44 this week and I've titled the sermon, Life Under the Righteous Judgment of God.

And that really could have been the title for any of the sermons in Deuteronomy 8 so far. I have a period of time where I'm afraid every time I preach. I don't have jitters like I used to have jitters years ago, But as I bore into the text and begin to see through long study, through careful study most times, the beauty of the text, how helpful it is, how much we need what's in the text, I start to be afraid that I just won't be able to do justice to the text. And it happens every time, and I end up just trusting in the sovereignty of God because I've found on most occasions that I end the sermon feeling like I've been helped mightily by God. But I just want to acknowledge that that exists.

And for this week's text, the same thing happened. There's so much good in this text that the people of God need, that I need, and I'm so happy to have found in the text. And I want so badly to communicate it in a way that you get to see all the things that I saw when I did the study. We're investing three weeks in the curses. Almost a month of our lives are given to looking at the curses in Deuteronomy 28.

And if you're going to invest three weeks in something, you better come out the other side of it, having real clarity about why you were there, what you were doing, what you should have gotten out of the time invested. And I want to take us first to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 about, really, all of the Old Testament, so it certainly applies here. Paul talks about the Old Testament, And he says, now all these things happened to them as examples. And they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. That's why we have it.

There's lots that did happen in those times that we don't have. But we do have this, and it's been given to us for a very specific purpose. And the purpose is that it would be an example. We would see how God has worked in the past, so we should know how we should live our lives in the present. And we'll find with every one of these curses, God is giving a warning.

And in each instance we'd be able to easily trace this out to an example where the thing being threatened by God actually was fulfilled. God confirmed his word by doing what he had threatened to do when people disobey him. These things happen to them as examples and they were written for our admonition. They apply to us. There are a couple of, there are really two objectives today for me related to this text.

The first is to communicate that God is no respecter of persons. We should never think that we're so special that these are just Old Testament things that don't apply to us. He is not a respecter of persons. We're not in a special class. And The warnings given to them are for us.

And the second thing is to describe what characterizes life when God finally, His patience runs out and He brings judgment. What life is like. Because we, in these three weeks, need to take the time to imagine ourselves being cursed. To imagine these things overtaking us, coming upon us, and what it would be like. So that God's intent in giving us the warnings would bear fruit.

So that we would consider our latter end and we would walk with wisdom. We would walk circumspectly. So those are our two objectives. That God is no respecter of persons and to think about what characterizes life when God brings judgment. So let's get right to it.

God is no respecter of persons. Think about who this admonition in the text today is being given to. It's being given to the people of God. It's being given to people who ate manna in the wilderness. They just picked up their food off the ground miraculously.

They never sowed, they never reaped. Their food was just given to them miraculously. They saw that, they were provided for in that way for 40 years. And so, rather than saying, isn't this an interesting Old Testament account? We should say, These are people who saw with their own eyes things that we may never see, and yet God gave them these warnings.

These are for us. In Deuteronomy 6, we get the description of what God is doing for His people. And these are the people who are hearing these warnings today. We may be far in Deuteronomy from Deuteronomy 6, but we're not far in time. These are the same people in just a few days or weeks later than Deuteronomy 6.

And here's the description. Here's how God describes what He's doing for His people, Deuteronomy 6, 10 through 12. So it shall be when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses of all good things which you did not fill, hewn out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. When you have eaten and are full, then beware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage." Now one of the questions that this text just begs is, well, who did build the large and beautiful cities? Who did fill the houses with all good things?

Who did dig the wells? Who did plant the vineyards and the olive trees? And there's a biblical answer for that question. There's a people who occupy this land who God speaks of in Genesis 15 when he originally gives the covenant to Abraham. And you'll remember the scene.

God has commanded Abraham to cut these animals in half and put a pathway between the haves of the animals. And Abraham is going to walk through the haves of the animals to confirm that the covenant has been made between God and himself. And God tells Abraham a lot about what's coming. It's not just all a covenant of happiness. God tells him the good, the bad, and the ugly in that covenant.

And he talks about their affliction and that they will be in bondage. And he says this of the people who are inhabiting the land in Genesis 15 verse 16. But in the fourth generation they shall return here to the promised land, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." So here we get a window into the people who did the building and the digging and the planting and the filling of the homes with all good things. It's the Amorites. And God has been bearing patiently with these people for hundreds of years until their iniquity is full.

And then He's finally going to say, enough. And He's going to take the good things that were in that land and give them to another people. And today's passage is exactly the reverse of that. And God is pointing out, I have done this. I told you about these people in Genesis 15, that one day, hundreds of years in the future, their iniquity would be full and I would take all those things away from them and give them to you.

Do not think that you are a special class of people and this could never happen to you. Now, are the Israelites a special people? Yes, they're a special people. They are the people of God. And yet God is saying, what I did to these people, I told you I would do to them because their iniquities were full in time.

And it could happen to you. That is the point of this text, is that What you're getting ready to benefit from could be taken from you and given as benefit to others. And God is so full of mercy that He wants to make this so clear, because He doesn't want His patience to be misunderstood. He doesn't want the fact that he doesn't judge every sin the moment that you do it to be misunderstood as he doesn't care about sin because he does care about sin. He's just patient and full of mercy.

And Paul takes up this theme in the New Testament for us, the speaking of the Church in Romans 11. And Paul says this, And if some of the branches were broken off and you being a wild olive, we're all wild olives here, or most of us are Gentiles, we're wild olives. This applies directly to us. We're grafted in among them and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.

You will say then, branches were broken off that I might be grafted in, well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty but fear, For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore, consider the goodness and severity of God on those who fell severity, but toward you goodness if you continue in his goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off." Paul understood this was not just for Israel, it was for the Gentiles that would be grafted in.

And it wasn't just for the Gentiles that would be grafted in, it was for Him. Paul says, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Philippians 2.12. Paul says, I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself might be disqualified." First Corinthians 9.27. Jesus says of the unprofitable servant, Therefore, take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.

For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 25, 28-30. The one who is faithful by God's grace, there is no other way to be faithful other than God's grace. The one who is faithful by God's grace will be given much.

But the one who has much and grows obese and kicks against God, what God has given him, what God has entrusted to him will be ripped from his hands and no one will save him and it will be given to another." And this is exactly what we see in today's text. God is warning them. I am giving you large and beautiful cities, houses full of all good things, hewn out wells, vineyards and olive trees, and it is by my grace, you did not build these large and beautiful cities, other hands built them. You did not fill these houses full of all good things. Other people filled them.

You did not dig these wells. They were hewn out by someone else. You did not plant and tend these vineyards and these olive trees, others did. It is a gift by my grace. And if you will not worship me as God with your lips and with your life, then you will betroth a wife and another man will lie with her." Verse 30.

You will build a house, but you will not dwell in it. Verse 30. Your ox will be slaughtered, but you won't eat of it. Verse 31. Your donkey shall be violently taken, and you'll never get it back.

Verse 31. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Verse 31. Your sons and your daughters will be given away, and though you long to see them, you will be able to do nothing about it. Verse 32.

You will labor to produce food, but another nation will eat it. Verse 33. You shall, but. You shall, but. You shall, but.

You shall intend to do this, take action to do this, but I will overthrow it all because you have not acknowledged me as God." So again, like last week and the week before, we ask, who are we? Who are we in this equation? Have we been given much or given little? Will much be expected of us or little? Are we the faithful, obedient servant who will be given more because we were trustworthy with what God gave us?

Or are we the unfaithful, disobedient servant who will have the good things that God entrusted to us taken back and given to another For if God did not spare the natural branches he may not spare you either therefore consider the goodness and severity of God on those who fell severity, but toward you goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off, Calvinists. Otherwise, you also will be cut off, Calvinists. Paul believed the doctrine of grace too by the way. And it didn't keep him from thinking this way and talking this way.

May we never be a people who in our Calvinism, in our belief in the sovereignty of God, and the eternal nature of salvation given to us, would not work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Paul was not like that. Paul is the originator of the doctrines of grace. That we would become so careless that we could think that we are a special people. These things could never befall us because God loves us.

Is that true that God loves us? Of course it's true. It's not the point. And God is giving us warnings. He's heaping up 54 verses of warnings in Deuteronomy 8.

And He's spreading them throughout the New Testament, the same message, so that we won't become careless. So God is no respecter of persons. We should work out our salvation with fear and trembling. And secondly, we should just take time to stop and contemplate what it's like when God brings judgment. And not just let these things pass and say, oh, isn't that interesting.

Now the really gruesome things, Dan gets to in the text next week, but there's plenty in the text that I covered last week and today, so if we'll take time to just close our eyes and think, what if this happened to me to make us tremble before God and be more careful in our lives? As we look at these verses, verses 30 through 44, We see a number of things, a number of themes that develop. And I want to name eight themes that I think come directly out of the text. They're the inescapable conclusions that you get from reading these verses. And the first one is number one, that God disrupts the normal patterns in disturbing ways.

If you've got a notes page, all eight of these things are on here. They're filling the blank, so I'm on number one now. And it's that God disrupts the normal patterns in disturbing ways. This is the inescapable conclusion of verse 30, where we're given three instances. You betray the wife, you build a house, you plant a vineyard.

And these are all things that have a normal course. In the normal course, when you betray the wife, you get married, there's physical union, and you become one, and you begin a life together as one, as a family. And when you build a house, after all that hard work you get to occupy it. And there's eventually a return on this investment where all the labor put into building this house, then you get to participate in the blessing of it. And when you plant and tend vineyards and olive trees, you get to enjoy the fruit of it.

That's the natural course of things. And we already know from Deuteronomy that God likes the natural course of things. God thinks it's good. God wants things to operate that way, and we know that because in Deuteronomy 20, which we've already covered, verses 5 through 7, God gives the instructions that when the Israelites go out to war, there's three things that need to happen. The officers need to come and say, have you planted a vineyard, but not profited from it yet?

If that's true, go home. We don't want you dying without profiting from your vineyard. Have you built a house but not lived in it yet? If that's true, Go home. We don't want you dying before you profited from your labors.

Have you betrothed a wife, but not had union with her, and not begun your life together as one? If that's true, then go home, because we don't want you dying in this battle, and not profiting from the natural course of things. God is not interested in vain labor. God wants fruitful labor. But we learn about vain labor and fruitful labor in Psalm 127.

That in God, labor isn't vain. But only in God. Labor without God is vain. Labor with God is fruitful. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.

Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows. God wants there to be fruitfulness and labor, that we would profit from the things that we do under His blessing. But when we do those things in rebellion to God, He will overthrow the natural course of things. God says the natural course of things is good, but He will overthrow it if we will not worship Him as God.

Number two, man loses control. Man completely loses control when God brings his judgment. This is what life is like when God comes and judges. You thought you were in control, but you find out that you were in control. That's why on your notes page you've got that in quotations.

You lose control. It's control that you never had at all, but you thought you had. And this is the inescapable conclusion of verse 31 and 32. Verse 31, your ox and your donkey are taken, and we get this phrase, and you shall have no one to rescue them. You shall have no one to rescue them.

And then in verse 32, your sons and daughters are given to another people. And we get this phrase, and there shall be no strength in your hand. There shall be no strength in your hand. And the language that God is giving us doesn't Leave any room for, but what if I do this? What if I say that?

The language that God gives us doesn't leave any wiggle room for recourse on your part. It's the incontrovertible decision of God. He is announcing His decree and it will come to pass. And what God is doing is striking at the heart of autonomous man. He is striking at the heart of autonomous man.

And at the heart is a fundamental problem of a loss of understanding that there is a God who presides over every movement of the particles of the universe, every particle. And man thinks he's losing control, but he's losing something that he never had. You can't lose something that you never had, by the way. Man does not have control. God has control.

And if we are to be blessed, we must live in His favor. You can't get up early enough to overthrow the judgments of God. You can't stay up late enough to overthrow the judgments of God. In vain do you rise early and stay up late." Man loses control. Number three, the link to the next generation is broken.

The link to the next generation is broken. This is the inescapable conclusion of verse 32. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people. And then also this theme is picked up again in verse 41. You shall begat sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity.

Friends, this is our job. This is our mission to successfully pass the Gospel of the grace of God to the next generation, and the next generation, and as many generations as God will give us breath and life. This is our mission. It's right at the center of what we're to be doing. So what is it when the link, when the judgments of God break the link between us and the next generation?

It is the most precious and fundamental things being ripped away from us. It is God saying, you have been unfaithful in the most fundamental things that will be taken from you. Rather than being entrusted with more because you've been faithful, even the most fundamental things that you have been given will be stripped away from you. It will be ripped from your hands. Now this is serious stuff.

This is foreign armies coming in and you having no say in the matter, no power to resist them, and taking your children from you. So Dan, Rachel, and Stephen, and Joshua are taken out of your house and you have no recourse. And on, and on, and on, look down your row. Look at these children that God has given you. And just place yourself in the spot for a moment.

What would it be like for God to take these children that we consider to be the most precious things in this world to us? And not even know if you'll ever see them again. Not know what your enemies are doing to your children. Brothers and sisters, we should fear God. Number four, God recalls the good gifts that He had given.

He takes them back. The good gifts that He has entrusted to you, He takes them back. And this is the inescapable conclusion of verse 33, a nation whom you have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor. People that you don't even know come and eat the things that you've been laboring towards. And that is God taking back good gifts that He has given to you.

And we get more insight on this in verse 38, verse 39, verse 40, where you carry much seed out to the field, but you gather little in. Where you plant and tend vineyards, but there's no grapes, there's no wine to enjoy. Where you have olive trees throughout your territory, but there's no oil for anointing your head because they're not fruitful. And this takes us back to a verse that we looked at in detail last week, Haggai 1-6, where he who earns wages, earns wages to put in a bag with what? With holes.

You're earning wages to put in a bag with holes. Now that's depressing. Earning wages to put it in a bag with holes? You might as well have the time back. And we learn that these holes in the bag have names.

They're the agents of God to rob you of the fruit of your labors. And in this particular passage, it's locusts and worms. But it can be any number of other things. If you look across the curses, it's more than just locusts and worms. It's also blight that will ruin your crops.

It's also hail which will beat down your crops. It's also droughts, God withholding His rain, which you need to grow your crops. And God has a thousand more agents just like that. And they're all little holes in the bag. And so we know that God will never run out of agents.

There's no way to cram stuff in the bag fast enough that you can accumulate anything. There's just too many holes. There's too many agents. And in verse 35, we learn that it's not just food, that it's also your health. Verse 35 we see severe boils from the bottom of your feet to the top of your head, and You cannot be healed from them.

This really made me think. At the beginning of every meal, we give God thanks for the meal. God, thank you. Here we are eating again. You have given us food again.

You're such a faithful provider. When's the last time you did anything like that about your health? As if good health is just a given. Just another day in paradise. It is a gift.

It's a gift from God every day that we wake up and we're healthy and feeling well. It should be just to us like we're sitting down to a meal. God, thank you. You have given me good health. And we don't even think about it until it's gone, until there's some sort of a severe boil on a part of our body.

And the discomfort causes us to think, man, it was so much better to feel good. Isaiah chapter 1, 5 and 6 speaks to this. Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. That's the answer to the question, why should you be stricken again?

You will revolt more and more. That's the answer to the question, why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot, even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.

They have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment." Here's why God sends the boils, the severe boils on you. Because you revolt more and more. And is this to the delight of God? No! God says, why will you be stricken again?

Why? These things are so that we'll turn, so that we won't revolt more and more. Brothers and sisters, why do we give God cause to bring judgment on us, to discipline us? He says, why would you be stricken? Number five, Number five, God brings unbearable pressure to bear.

He brings unbearable pressure to bear. And this is the inescapable conclusion of verse 34. So you shall be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see. You'll be driven mad by it. We tend to think tough about adversity.

When hard times come, I'm ready. Bring on the hard times. I can manage it. I can get through it. And then you miss just one night's sleep and you're Frankenstein.

And you begin to realize if real adversity comes, What will it be like? I just missed one night's sleep and I just want to snap at everybody around me. I'm going to go out and find people to snap at. One night's sleep. God will break a stiff necked people who will not be corrected through the normal channels.

Now we're studying curses that are pretty much, I mean they're far down the line. By the time you get to these curses, God has exhausted a lot of patience and a lot of other options. And He has brought conviction. And He has brought discipline in a hundred different ways before you get to the curses that we're studying now, but they have been ignored. God will break a stiff-necked people who will not be corrected through the normal channels.

Matthew Henry has an interesting comment on the phrase, driven mad. Here's what Matthew Henry says about the phrase, driven mad. That is quite bereaved of all comfort and hope and abandoned to utter despair. Those that walk by sight and not by faith are in danger of losing reason itself when everything about them looks frightful. Those that walk by sight and not by faith are in danger of losing reason itself when everything about them looks frightful.

Here's the point that he's making. The curses are coming upon people who are exhibiting unbelief. And these are exactly the people who cannot bear up under the pressure of Curses. People who trust in God might have many of these circumstances come upon them and be able to be sustained in God. Isn't this what happens to Daniel?

These curses come upon Daniel and yet he is sustained by God. Daniel flourishes in the middle of the curses. He isn't driven mad by them at all. But the people for whom the curses are intended crumple between them because they're walking by sight and not by faith. On those who do not trust in Him, who are exhibiting all the classic signs of unbelief, He will bring pressure that they are not able to bear.

They will be made mad by the sights that their eyes see. Number six. No one is exempt. No one is exempt. This is the inescapable conclusion of verse 36, that even the king goes into captivity with his people.

There are certain levels of calamity and general hardship that the great can just buffer themselves from because they have resources that other people don't have. So when a recession hits, they feel a little bit of pain, but really they've got a lot of buffer. They'll be OK. This is not what is being described here. When God brings judgment, when the curse of God comes, the great man and the janitor all suffer the consequences of it.

And that's what we see in verse 36. The people go into captivity and the king goes right alongside them. And this is prophetic. They have no king or no call for a king at the time. So it's interesting to see how God puts this.

It says, the Lord will bring you and the king, whom you set over you, into captivity. And this actually happens to Manasseh. He's a king who goes into captivity with his people. This actually happens to Jehoiakam. Jehoiakam, he's a king who goes into captivity with his people.

And this actually happens to Zedekiah. And we'll talk more about Zedekiah in a minute. He's a king who goes into captivity with his people. And there are others to a lesser extent. And in 2 Kings 25, we get the most terrifying image that you could ever have.

And it is of the king Zedekiah. 2 Kings 25, 7 says this. Then they killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Put out the eyes of Zedekiah, bound him with bronze fetters, and took him into Babylon. How do you like being the king now?

They put his sons to death in front of his eyes and then they poke his eyes out so that the last images he'll ever see with those eyes are his sons being killed. And then they fetter him and they carry him off to a foreign land. We said this last week, there's no more appropriate thing to say this week. Welcome to war with God. Do you think you can sustain yourself in a war with God?

Because the judgment on these people and on Zedekiah had been prophesied by Jeremiah. This specific instance had been prophesied by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 21.5. And in this, this is a passage I think that actually Philip read to us in the continued teaching time last week. But God says, I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger and fury and great wrath. God says, I myself will fight against you.

And then in 2 Kings, we get the account of this terrible result, this terrible thing that happens to Zedekiah that had been prophesied, that God would fight against himself with anger. God himself would fight against Zedekiah. No one is exempt. And kings which are intended to be a blessing by God, authority is intended always to be a blessing by God, but sometimes goes horribly wrong. This king who should have been leading these people in repentance.

As we see in the book of Jonah, the king was the first one in sackcloth and ashes and he saved his city. Zedekiah should have done what that king did. But instead he sustained himself in his rebellion and God himself fought against him. No one is exempt. Number seven.

Number seven. The privilege of worshiping God freely is revoked. The privilege of worshipping God freely is revoked. And this is the inescapable conclusion of verse 36. The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known.

And there you shall serve other gods. There you shall serve other gods. Wood and stone. And a great exposition of this is back in Deuteronomy 4, which tells us about being carried off to serve other gods. Deuteronomy 4 says this, When you begat children and grandchildren, and have grown old in the land and act corruptly and make a carved image in the form of anything and do evil in the sight of the Lord your God to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you crossed over the Jordan to possess.

You will not prolong your days in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. And there you will serve God's the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell." And again, in Daniel 3, this is exactly what we see. People carried into captivity and compelled, not invited, compelled to serve foreign gods. And in that account, only a very, very few stood up to say, we will not do it.

The rest bowed down and served those foreign gods. And that's what's being warned against. God is warning the people, if you will not serve Me, you will serve a foreign God. You won't be invited to do so. You will be compelled to do so.

And God tells us why this is in the Song of Moses, the very same text that we recite every Sunday now. He, God will say, where are their gods, the rock in which they sought refuge? Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them arise and help you and be your refuge. Now see that I, even I, am He, and there is no God besides Me.

I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. Nor Is there any who can deliver from My hand?" It is a privilege to worship God in complete freedom with no fear of reprisals from the government or anyone else. It is such a privilege. Do we know how rare it is in the world today?

And the world today, in this category, might be better than it has ever been in all of history. And in the world today, This is a rare thing that we enjoy. And it's actually beginning to be threatened and nibbled away at. And why is that? Well, we learn a lot about why that is in Deuteronomy 28.

But It's a rare thing that we enjoy the freedom. That we can all come here on a Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, and the police don't care that we're here. Matter of fact, the police are probably happy that we're here. We're the least of their worries. But there are many places on this earth when it is not like that.

And we should not presume that it will be like that here forever. If we persist in shifting the honor due to the living God to other things, if we persist in shifting the honor that is due, the living God, to other things, then God will let us have our other gods, little G-gods. And then you get to see how they are as masters. What you get in return for your drink offerings. And you get to see if they can be your refuge.

Number eight. God brings reproach and dishonor from outsiders. God brings reproach and dishonor from outsiders. God brings reproach and dishonor from outsiders. This is the inescapable conclusion of verse 37.

And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you." Psalm 44 verse 14 says this, you make us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples. What a good sense that is to help us understand what is being described here. It's just a shaking of the head. People think of them, and when they think of the things that have come upon what were supposed to be the people of God, they just shake their head. They just jeer at it.

And they shake their head in disbelief at what has become these people. And the last two verses of this section also speaks to this. Where the alien who is among you will rise higher and higher, and you shrink lower and lower, and he becomes the lender and You become the borrower. So much for being salt in light. So much for being a city on a hill.

This is a lamp whose light has been extinguished. And contrast this to what we saw at the beginning of the chapter. We keep doing this. We keep seeing the curse and then we go back and say, how different of a world is this to what God would desire. God wants to bless.

And we see in the blessings in verse 9 and 10, and then picking up again in the second half of 12, we see this, the Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself. So here's the design point. Here's what God wants. Now we'll see what you get if you will not obey Him in our text today. But we're going back to say what does God really want?

Here's what God wants. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you. If you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways, then 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. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail.

You shall be above only and not beneath, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and be careful to observe them." If the people will turn to God, if they will repent, if they will change their minds and then change their lives as a result of changing their minds, this is what God desires. He'll make them a light. He'll make them salt. He'll set them on a hill as a city to make his own name great, but if they will not obey him, he will make them the tail and not the head. He will make them the borrower and not the lender.

The stranger will go higher and higher while we shrink lower and lower. Applications. I have three applications. Number one, think about sin. Think about sin.

Is God right? Is disobedience, is rebellion really worth all this that God says He will bring upon us as a result of it? Is God right? If you've answered no in your heart, no one will ever answer no with their lips, but if you've answered no with your heart, then you don't understand God and you don't understand yourself. You don't understand Him in His perfections.

Him in His rights as Creator. And you don't understand really the nature of your own heart and sin. And what a black thing it is. To instead of being thankful to a God who has given us this world, what a magnificent world. And really just ask that we would be thankful and acknowledge Him as God, that instead of that we would sustain ourselves in rebellion to Him.

And we would say in a thousand ways, God, you're wrong. Your ways are not good ways. Your paths are not peace. Not with our lips, but with how we live our lives. Since God is right about sin, since it is right for Him to bring these curses upon us, are you working out your salvation with fear and trembling?

As you ought to do, you ought to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Let us be Calvinists. Let us never be hyper Calvinists who would say, I am in the fold. Nothing can ever bad befall me now. The curses cannot touch me.

That is the thought of a person who's probably not in the fold at all anyway, who is deceived in their own heart about their status before God. I pray that our times and the curses would make us tremble. That we would know that there is a holy God in heaven. And that He is a God who will confirm His words. He will not be mocked.

Whatever a man sows, that He will also reap. Number one, think about sin. Number two, think about the cross. When we begin to think rightly about sin, our whole view of the cross changes. And the cross doesn't just represent mercy and love.

It does represent mercy and love, but it doesn't represent just that. Equally, it represents the justice of God. What is the cross about if it is not about the justice of God? If it is not about the righteous wrath of God being poured out against sin? It was just that God would crush Jesus Christ on the cross for sin.

It was just. It was right of Him to do it. That all the trees of the mankind would be bound up and that the wrath of God would be poured out against it and that Jesus Christ who never sinned once would be crushed. And he would say, my God, my God, why have You forsaken me? He was forsaken because of your sin.

That's why. Because of my sin. Because of God's just wrath against it. And that it must be satisfied. And that He wanted to have a people for his own possessions, so he bought one.

He redeemed one. Think of the mercy of God towards sinners. That He would bear on Himself the punishment for our treason. Friends, this is inexplicable. Who can offer an explanation for this?

The mercy of God is great. Number one, think about sin. Number two, think about the cross. Number three, seek the Lord while He may be found. Seek the Lord while He may be found.

That's a phrase that comes out of Isaiah 55 and will end with this text. Isaiah 55, 6 and 7, Seek the Lord while he may be found. That's a phrase that comes out of Isaiah 55. And we'll end with this text. Isaiah 55, 6 and 7.

Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man His thoughts. Let him return to the Lord and He will have mercy on him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." Friends, we delay at our own risk. The exhortation from God is, Seek me while I may be found.

Turn to me while I am near. What things do we need to repent of? He may be found now. He may be found today. He is near.

We should seek Him while He may be found. We should turn to Him while He is near. Tomorrow always slays our good intentions. Don't make your plans tomorrow. Don't do your things tomorrow.

Seek Him while He may be found. Let's pray. Oh God, how we need Your mind. How we need our thoughts to be replaced by your thoughts on the topic of sin, and on the true nature of yourself and ourself. God, we confess the frailty of our thinking, how even when somewhat of a right thinking is restored to our mind, how quickly it recedes, how quick we are to return to our own thoughts, how often we need to have these things refreshed in our minds.

God, I know I preach nothing new to any of these people, and yet how helpful it is to have the old things said again so that we would be careful before you, so that we would be diligent to obey all your commandments. You are a kind Father, a loving Father. You will abundantly pardon us as we return to You. Oh, God, make us a people who return to You quickly. Don't make us a stiff-necked people, God, who You have to break.

People who have to be led around by a bridle or else we won't come near you. But God, the people who love you, the people who run to you. God, how we desire it to be so. Ask these things, and Jesus' things. Amen.