In the sermon 'The Blessings of Obedience' by Scott Brown, the speaker elaborates on the passage from Deuteronomy 28:1-14, emphasizing that blessings are conditional upon obedience to God's commandments. The sermon highlights the various blessings that include prosperity, protection, and favor, which are promised to those who diligently follow God's will. It underscores the principle that the blessed life is not determined by external circumstances or material possessions but is rooted in obedience to God. The speaker contrasts the blessings of obedience with the curses that result from disobedience, noting that while blessings are proactive and pursue the faithful, curses are a result of turning away from God's commandments. The sermon also addresses the sovereignty of God, who actively commands blessings for His people, and cautions against the illusion of an impersonal universe as suggested by secular viewpoints. Additionally, the speaker reflects on the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, illustrating how Jesus fulfills the promises and curses of Deuteronomy. Emphasizing the importance of being careful and diligent in obedience, the sermon concludes with applications for personal life, marriage, politics, and evangelism, urging believers to seek God's blessings through faithful obedience.

Deuteronomy 28, 1-14 is our sermon text. Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all his commandments, which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flocks.

Blessed shall be your baskets and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face. They shall come out against you by one way and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

The Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself, just as he is 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. And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, and the fruit of your body, and the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, and the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you his good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand. 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 are careful to observe them. So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you to this day, to the right or to the left to go after other gods to serve them. O Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for how you can show us, how you clearly Show us that you will bless us Lord if we obey you carefully The Lord I pray for Scott as he comes up Lord that you will speak through him That we will open our hearts and our minds to hear everything that you say to us in Jesus name. Amen Well these wonderful words that have just been read were meant specifically for the children of Israel as they went into the land. This is land-based, but they're also in principle for every believer who is justified by faith.

Every one of them were fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ and they'll finally be seen and felt, known, heard, experienced in mega-form in heaven. So it's such a joy to be in a passage of scripture that so extols the glory of God and the kind intention of His will for those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose. According to his purpose. My desire today really is to extol the Lord for his greatness, for his mercy, for what he's done for my soul, for what he has done for his people by being so kind. Long-suffering, slow to anger, giving us away in this world as this passage so clearly tells us about.

Martin Luther said this is the longest chapter, but it's also the easiest. Its message can be understood by the simplest child and the most accomplished scholar. And it's a beautiful passage that has so much for us. I just want to give a few words of introduction about this text because first of all this text contains what I'm just going to call the fundamental secret of the blessed life. It's revealed right here in this passage.

The blessed life is not created for us when we go seeking blessings. It's not about where you live, it's not about that great job you just got, It's not about that great family that you might have. The blessings aren't from the church that you go to, or the quality of the city, or the quality of the country, or the ideal nature of your house that you just got, or your financial situation. There's really only one thing that blesses, only one thing and that's obedience to God. No matter where you are, if you're in the city or you're in the country, no matter where you are, this is the fundamental principle of blessing.

That no matter where one might find himself whether it's in the darkest cave or whether it's in the highest height That there is one way and only one way in the world Or anyone can have any blessing which means you can have blessing in a lot of places. So that's the fundamental secret of the blessed life that is here. This section here is an exposition of the goodness and the reliability of God. And the entire chapter carries the same theme that if this then that God is reliable you can count on the way that he responds to various kinds of situations. You know I've in reading this you know over the week particularly I and and singing the song that we sang so many times this last week, Come thou found of every blessing has been on my mind." And the phrase in there, let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.

And when I sang those words, The many times that I sang those words this week, those grabbed me by the heart. Because honestly, it has been the goodness of God that has been the fetter that's tied my heart to Him. I came to faith not through a really a very good understanding at all of the wrath of God. I wish that were not so. I wish I had understood the wrath of God when I was converted.

But it was His mercy that converted me. It was His kindness that led me to repentance. And it was His mercies that was like a fetter that bound my heart to Him. And I can remember so many times in my life as a young person especially, that I feared to sin because of the deprivation of the goodness of God in that. And I consciously have it in my mind how so often God protected me, not because of fear of the wrath of God, but because of fear of the deprivation of the mercies of God toward me and I knew he was good and So this this passage helps us to To do what David said to O taste and see that the Lord is good.

Blessed is the man who trusts in him." So that's the fundamental secret of the blessed life. That it's found in one place, one place alone, it's obedience. Secondly, just to sort of calibrate us again with the context of this passage of Scripture. The children of Israel are on the verge of entering into the promised land and it will be, as this text says, impossible for them to be successful in that land without obedience. And what was true for the children of Israel is true for us as well.

The curses can be avoided by obedience. And so last week we were considering with Jason the last verses of chapter 27 and we saw that it demonstrated the wrath of God which is revealed from heaven. Now in chapter 28, 1-14 we see the blessings of God delivered to the earth because of his reliable mercy to return blessing to those who would obey him. So Moses is revealing the very different qualities of the free woman and the bond woman that Jason explained to us last week. These two qualities are demonstrated by the messages coming from these two mountains.

There's Mount Ebal, the mountain of cursing, and there's Mount Gerizim, the mountain of blessing. And there are always two mountains hanging over your head in this world, and they're both talking to you. And they're crying out for your soul. They want you. And that's the image that we have of the children of Israel as they are making sacrifices before God, just before they enter in into the promised land.

And so Moses now is listing the very public blessings and curses that flow from this single issue of obedience. So that's the context. But the conditions for this life of blessing are spoken of in verses 1 and 2. Now these are conditional blessings. They only happen when certain other things happen.

And so it says in verse 1, Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments, which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth and all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the Lord your God. This is a conditional clause. It's an if-then kind of statement. And this same pattern is carried on throughout verses 1 through 14 and the rest of the chapter. If you jump down to verse 9, you'll see it again.

If you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in your ways, then all the peoples of the earth, and then if you jump down further to verse 13, at the end of it, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them." So this whole section on blessings is conditional. It all hangs on conditional clauses. So that means that they are not for everyone. There will be these blessings deprived from some, from everyone who rejects them, the obedience of them. It says here that there's some really wonderful language in here.

It says that they overtake you. Do you see that? They just overtake you. So these blessings are proactive. They're aggressive.

They go after you. They follow you. You know all the days of your life like Psalm 23 says surely Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever that's what he's speaking of here. These blessings are going after you. They follow you wherever you go.

They follow you to the city. They follow you to the country. They follow you to the cave. They follow you to the prison cell. They follow you wherever you go.

And that's the wonderful thing about them. Here the Bible is again teaching us about the irresistibility of God's grace and His wrath as well. And also the sovereignty of God in it. How God has arranged it this way. That God makes this happen.

Let me prove this to you. If you look in this section, The words, I will, appear seven times. And I think it's significant. I'll show you in verse 1. The Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.

He will set you high. Verse 7, the Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face. So he will cause something to happen with your enemies. Verse 8, the Lord will command the blessings on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand. In verse 9, the Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself.

Verse 11, the Lord will grant you plenty of goods. Verse 12, the Lord will open to you. Verse 13, the Lord will make you the head. So He sets you, He causes you, He commands The blessing, He establishes you, He grants you, He opens to you, and He makes you the head. This is a beautiful, very vivid example of the sovereignty of God in blessing.

This is the kind intention of His will. He will do it. He's promising. He's powerful to bring these blessings to you, when you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God so this is a this is a cause and effect kind of kind of relationship here now perhaps perhaps some of you heard in the last couple weeks how how this brilliant scientist Stephen Hawking has declared that the universe does not need God. The way that the universe is, it just doesn't need a creator, it doesn't need anything.

It just rolls on by itself. There's actually nothing there. It's just rolling on. There's no will out there. It's just happening.

There's no need for God. God does not speak. He does not act. There is nothing there at all. This is the impersonal universe that the devil wants people to believe in.

That there are no consequences, that there's no will that's exercising, that is being exercised in the world, either to destroy or to build up and to bless. But there is something out there that blesses and curses, and that's God. And He is there and He's not silent and he's not inactive in the world. Even though people like Stephen Hawking would like to pretend that he is not. The devil wants you to think that there are no consequences to anything.

But here, God stands in juxtaposition against this principle and says, no, no, I will. I will do these things. When we get into the next section, the long section of cursings, we find this same pattern as well, that God does, God is there and he is going to do his will in the world. Proverbs 11, 18 I think says it so well, he who sows righteousness will have a sure reward. As righteousness leads to life, so he who pursues evil pursues it to his own death.

And that's the kind of universe that we live in. We don't live in an impersonal universe where there's nothing there. We live in a universe of, on the one hand, blessing, and on the other hand, a terrifying retribution that falls upon those who do not obey the voice of Almighty God who is high above all the heavens of the earth he will do his will as in this text seven times he says I will I will I will I will I will and he does it for his own glory. So this is the conditional nature of the blessings that come. Everything that I've just said in the last few minutes, I just want to help us understand that these are conditional blessings and they are exclusively the territory of a sovereign God who does do His will in the world and He is there.

And then we come to the section of the blessings beginning in verse 3. And we come to this beautiful Hebrew word, Baruch, blessing or blessed. It's the same word that the Lord Jesus Christ uses in the Sermon on the Mouth. The meaning carries the same weight. And so as we consider these blessings, I just want us to make a couple of observations.

First observation is this, and I'm sure We memorize this text so you know this is true. Verses 3 through 6 are opposites of verses 16 through 19. Verses 3 through 6, Blessed shall you be in the city, Blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body. In verse 16, cursed shall you be in the city.

Cursed shall you be in the country. And it goes on. And so there's this same pattern. Blessings and curses in the exact same areas of life. We need to understand also the continuity of the Old Testament and the New Testament and this principle that you really cannot understand Deuteronomy 28 completely until you understand the Lord Jesus Christ, who uses the same terminology in His own instruction to all of us.

And the Lord Jesus came to fulfill the blessings and to deliver the curses of Deuteronomy 28. If you read the Gospels and you look for the language of blessing and cursings, You will see Moses mirrored before your eyes in how much Moses and the Lord Jesus are alike in their prophecies. And here we find in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, in seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain, and when he was seated, his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meat, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." And he goes on with one blessing after another in the same way that this passage does as well. The Lord Jesus is fulfilling, he's explaining, he's sort of exploding the meaning to greater ranges than we understood before through Moses, and is fulfilling it with his very life and with his very instruction. Now one question that is worth asking is this, why are there so few blessings and so many cursings?

That's obvious from the text. So you know in considering the proportionality of this, how come they're not equal? How come it's not 50-50? You know, is this God is fair, right? So I think that we should have a fair enough God that would at least have the same number of cursings.

Well, Let's look out throughout the whole Bible and see if the number of cursings and the number of blessings are equal. I don't know the answer to that question. But I'll tell you, in this passage, there are 68 verses in Deuteronomy 28. And 54 of them are for curses. And only 14 of them are for blessings.

And why is there this disparity in our own minds of emphasis with so few verses that focus on the blessings? Now, the text doesn't exactly tell us why. I don't think. I can't find any tips necessarily in the text. So, we're open to speculation, and I just want to give you a few speculations of my own.

And we don't know the mind of God, but we have to be confronted, at least with the reality, that there are so few blessings and so many cursings in this passage of Scripture. So, here I'm going to give you three speculations. First of all, we tend, because we tend to underestimate our depravity, we need to be made aware of the comprehensive and destructive nature of our depravity. We are fallen creatures. In the garden, we fell.

And Adam's sin was imputed upon us. And we became hopelessly lost in our sins, completely unable to overcome our depravity by any good works at all. So perhaps the emphasis is here because we underestimate our depravity. Here's another possibility. We tend to underestimate the very impact of sin in our own lives.

We think of sin as a poor choice, a mistake. Choice, a mistake. But we often are unaware of the radical, destructive, hellish, poisonous results of sin, the impact of it. And so perhaps lest we refuse to repent of our sins, God gives us an enormously hard-hitting and long rebuke to our sins, and particularly to the greatness of the impact of our sins and how bad they are. That the devil is a roaring lion ready to devour us, that we will slip in due time, that we've been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

I think the emphasis here is to help, is to bring us to hopelessness so that we don't trust in ourselves, that we don't think there's anything righteous, that we have no pride, we don't stand above our brother, and think that somehow the impact of our sins are just so much less than those others around us, because we figured it out. But God is giving us, I believe, this emphasis to chastise us, to help us see that our sins are more destructive than we ever thought they were. And then a third, we are not just underestimating the impact of sin, but we are often insensible to our own sins themselves. And because of our natural self-righteousness, We are blind to see our own sins. It's so easy for us to identify the sins of those who we're speaking with or about.

But we are insensible to our own sins. And this is divine shock treatment to get us into sensibility to our sins. There's a log in our eye. We don't even see the log. Other people see it, but we can't.

And so we're so insensible that he would turn us back so that we wouldn't say, well, God forgives my sins, right? And leave it at that, rather than to seek the Lord while he may be found to repent and to be found with the right self-image. So these are speculations, But the weight of the testimony is upon the curses for a reason. And so let's at least let the emphasis hit us hard and take us down on our knees in humility before God so that we understand who we really are. So then he opens up these blessings and there are 11 of them as are listed in your outline.

And we'll just take them one by one. Now, the first blessing are the kinds of blessings that are wherever you are. Blessed shall you be in the city, blessed shall you be in the country. Now God always has His people living in different kinds of places. There are people today not living in such sweet accommodations as we are today.

Our brothers and sisters, many of them, are in harsh and dangerous situations today. And what this means is that God blesses His people wherever they are. And the country is not the only place of blessing. Often people feel that if they could just find that 20 acres and their family would be there, living, children running across the hillsides, and it would be so wonderful, They would have something to do. And it would be such a blessing to them, especially the young boys.

And the girls could walk barefoot in the grass in this beautiful place in the country. And so people long for chickens and goats. I don't know why anyone would long for goats, but they do. And the country life, though, it does not bless your family Unless unless it's mixed with obedience The blessing is not in the city. It's not in the country.

It's only in the obedience so blessed shall you be only in this condition of obedience. If you moved to the country for blessing, you moved to the wrong place for blessing because it doesn't exist there. It doesn't exist in the top ten cities in America. It only exists where there's a heart that says, I love your law, help me, oh Lord, to keep your commandments. That's the only place that blessing is found.

As soon as we can be disappointed enough with the city or the country we moved into the better, so we can find the true place of blessing, it's only found in obedience. Solomon said in Proverbs 4, 18, that the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is like darkness, they do not know what makes them stumble. And so here this blessing is for those who find the only true blessing in the world from heaven because of the kindness of God who delivers good commandments to His people. And then they take them to heart, whether they're in the city, or whether they're in the country, or whether they're in the jail, or whether they're in the zero-line house, or a tenement somewhere, in a bombed-out city, because you can have it anywhere you go.

Isn't that wonderful? No matter where you go. The Lord, He follows you. He follows you. He dogs you.

He tails you. His blessings follow you all the days of your life. And you'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So, isn't that good? Isn't that so good?

That the blessings aren't found because of the quality of some earthly thing that is around us. We have something greater, something that never ceases. Wherever we go, 24 hours a day, never ever cut off from blessedness. What a wonderful, kind Savior. What good He's done for my soul in that.

So there are blessings wherever you are. Now, no one has ever been justified by the works of the law, that whoever practices them is blessed." So the Lord blesses, next, with blessings of productivity. This is the second classification of blessings of productivity. The Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle, and the offspring of your flocks. There are two kinds of productivity that are here that are results of obedience.

One is the blessing of offspring, the fruit of your body. This is, again, we come to what God calls a blessing, something that he desires. He alone opens and closes the womb by his own sovereign hand. But there are blessings of offspring, meaning that people are able to conceive. Again, I was looking at the sign-up list for our upcoming Love the Church conference.

The average family size as it is today is 7.7. So these people are having all kinds of babies that are coming to this conference. And there are blessings of fertility in obedience to the law of God. The companion text of this is Leviticus chapter 26. The whole chapter 26 has the same principles and follows some of the same patterns.

But in Leviticus 26.9, God says, I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply and confirm my covenant with you. In other words, you're going to be able to have lots of children and my covenant will be seen in the rolling faithfulness from one generation to the next. It's the blessing of Abraham. In you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And this is God's blessing.

So these blessings are, on one hand, they're generational, and that is a blessing. When you have children and then their hearts love the Lord. You know, it was just this week that one of our girls here in this church turned 18. And it was such a cause of rejoicing for me. Because of what God is doing among the girls, not just the girls, but among the girls in our church, it's miraculous.

They've humbled themselves and they have taken the Word of God to be true. And the 13-year-old girls are not like the silly, stupid 13-year-old girls of this culture. I'm constantly, when I meet people on the street who don't know me or don't know my family, I tell them I have a 15-year-old daughter and they always say, oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, what a terrible, oh, it must be so hard, it must be so terrible, you know, for to have a 15 year old. Well, I'm always taken aback because the 15 year olds in our church are sweet.

I'm so grateful. They're not walking in the way of the gentiles. God's blessing them. And by the way, God is blessing these girls who are doing this, and it's a wonderful thing. But these blessings here are generational.

They have to do with fruitfulness, and then and they are also covenantal in the sense that they carry on the covenant of God from one generation to the next. This is a sign of the favor of God. And then they're also material because it's the produce of your ground, your herds, your cattle, and your flocks. So it also has to do with material things as well. And yet, while no one has ever been justified by the works of the law, everyone who practices them is blessed.

And so we come to the next blessing. The Lord does bless those who obey. The third blessing is the blessing of your provisions. Verse 5. This has to do with domestic life, family life.

The men's Bible study met while we were gone and and I and Jonathan Sides rolled up some of the comments that were there. One of the comments I really loved was this, God's blessings even overtake the kitchen utensils. How's that? Your basket and your kneading bowl. Of course, he's talking about the stuff in the basket and the kneading bowl.

But God is sovereign even over the smallest area, even that little basket, even that kneading bowl. God has his eye on it to fill it for his people. And this is why the Lord Jesus Christ, in Matthew chapter 6, He said, Therefore do not worry, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For after all these things, the Gentiles eagerly seek. For your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient is the day for its own trouble." So here we find this blessing of provisions. Blessed be your basket and your kneading bowl. So the Lord blesses those who obey, even down to the level of their basket and their kneading bowl.

And there's another blessing in verse 6. Blessings, blessings of protection. Blessings of protection. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. And so in every aspect of your life, everywhere you go, you cannot escape the blessing of God and even the protection of God.

Leviticus 26, again The companion text of Deuteronomy 28, verses 5 and 6 say, And dwell in your land safely, I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid. I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. Proverbs 2, 8, He is a shield to those who walk uprightly. He guards the path of justice and preserves the way of his saints. These are blessings of protection.

How much we need it today, especially when 28% of the accidents happen on the road because of people texting in their cars while they're driving, talking back and forth, chit chatting, wham, happening all the time. What will you do to be protected from this? And whoever, you know, whatever else, other foolish people who would text while they drive and perhaps put other people's lives, maybe your life is not worth that much, it would be OK if you ran off there. But you might kill somebody's father or their son. But there are blessings of protection in travel.

And doesn't it amaze you when you travel? You're hurtling down the road at 65 miles an hour or faster and you're three feet from people, wham, coming right by. It's amazing that we're not all dead by now, especially when you drive around in these big vehicles like we were this last week. There's no margin for error at all You know it's just nothing short of Miraculous that you know that it works. I fear you know for anyone who gets into a motorhome.

They're so wide and But the reality is God God God protects you when you when you go out and when you come in. This is the blessing of the Lord. We're all sitting here. We're all testimonies of this. That He's been protecting you.

It's absolutely miraculous that he does it with all the dangerous things that we do just in the normal course of the day. We shooom past people, you know, just a foot away. But when you come in and when you go out, He is a shield to you. He says, I will never leave you or forsake you. This is so different.

This is so different from those who have no God, who have no Heavenly Father, who watches over even the hairs of their head and knows of the steps of their feet before they take them or the thoughts of their minds before they have them. The God who hems you in behind and before, who lays his hand upon you, as the psalm says. This is so different from those who would live in fear. In the cursing section in 28 verses 66 and 67, If you reject the commandments of God, your life shall hang in doubt before you. You shall fear day and night, and have no assurance of life.

In the morning you shall say, oh, that it were evening. In the evening you shall say, oh, that it were morning because of the fear which terrifies your heart and because of the sight which your eyes see. In contrast, Solomon in Proverbs 3, then you shall walk safely in your way and your foot you will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Do not be afraid of the fear of sudden disaster or or the trouble that comes to the wicked. For the Lord will be your confidence, and he will keep your foot from being snared." Now that's life, that's the life of obedience. The life of obedience gives this to you, by the way. It just doesn't happen, it happens because, this text says it happens because of obedience. Well of course, we know that no one has ever been justified by the works of the law, but everyone who practices them will be blessed.

And then we come to the next blessing, number five, blessing in conflicts of war. Blessing in conflicts of war. Here we find enemies are defeated. Let's notice something though. Though enemies are defeated, they're still enemies.

Peace is not promised. Your enemies will not all be totally evacuated from your presence, but they will be defeated. So they will come from time to time God will do business with them that's what he's saying here but we we should this is not a promise of absence of war but what it does say is that they break rank for some reason, that God ordains and they flee. Leviticus 26 verse 7, the companion text, you will chase your enemies and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase 100, and 100 of you shall put 10, 000 to flight.

Your enemies shall fall by the sword before you." You probably recognize that principle being in the Song of Moses, but it is here as well. We will not always be liked when we are obedient by those around us, and enemies will come up. They'll rise up, as it says in this text. And then sixth, the sixth blessing, blessings on your storehouses, verse 8. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses, and in all to which you set your hand.

And He will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you." Now, it's possible you could break this up into different blessings. I think you could easily. But there's a work of divine power. And I don't want you to miss this. There are four words here that are really amazing.

Do you see them? In verse 8. The Lord will command. The Lord will command. He will command the blessing.

Isn't that amazing? Here you are, Joe Average, walking down, trying to obey God with your whole heart. You know that you're not justified by your obedience. But you know that there's a God who commands blessing upon you. You can, wherever you walk, you can know that you have a God who is able to command at the right second the blessing that you need.

And Isn't it so that they come out of nowhere? And he does this in every area of life, doesn't he? In areas of provision, in areas of employment, in areas of marriage. You can walk along and You don't know where the blessing is in this future, hope for, spouse, but then God commands the blessing and it happens. This is the way God works.

He commands the blessing in your storehouses and into all to which you set your hand. Now, I think what Moses is saying, remember storehouses? We've run across this idea of storehouses before. There are storehouses for the poor, the fatherless, and the widow. People bring their resources in.

In other words, he will give you income so that you can have storage of resources so that you can bless. And he commands it so that you'll have whatever employment you need so that the storehouses will be will be full if you're faithful to give them and so he will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand so this obviously it has to do with your work and the fruit of it, that you have something to give. Paul tells us that we should set aside something to give. That's part of our role in the world, is to have it. But it's a work of divine power.

There's something else here that I think that we should just camp on for a moment. Here we get the idea that wealth is a gift of God. Because we live in a Marxist world, we think that wealth is somehow a stain. Wealth is bad. If you have it, you have to distance yourself from it, or if you don't have it, you have to distance yourself from those who have it.

That's the Marxist worldview. Wealth is bad. Everyone should be the same. Christianity though says, no, wealth is actually good. Well, it can be bad.

It can cause many to be plunged into terrible, terrible problems because of sin and lusting after money and serving it that way. But wealth in itself is a gift of God. It becomes accursed with an accursed heart. But here, The wealth is a gift of God. And wealth is a sign of faithfulness.

Wealth is a sign of obedience here in this text. And because we live in a culture of a Marxist envy, when anyone has wealth, we wonder what they did wrong. That's just sort of our knee-jerk reaction. Okay, how did he get it? That's real, that's just because we live in a Marxist, we live in a devil-driven kind of media world that tells us that over and over and over again.

And We just get bathed in it. So you have a whole culture that doesn't that doesn't see wealth as just a blessing and a certain and something to rejoice in Proverbs 10 22 says the blessing of the Lord makes one rich and He has no sorrow to it Now this is not the same thing as what is called the prosperity gospel. This is not the prosperity gospel. This is an element of the true gospel that God blesses His people. The prosperity gospel says that believers have a right to health and wealth and then they can obtain these things through positive confessions of faith by using their words, their rama, their words go out and then they're fulfilled somehow miraculously because words are fulfilled that they're sowing seeds.

If you faithfully pay tithes on your credit card, hopefully before the end of the show, then you'll be able to get a blessing. Give a hundred, get ten thousand back. That's the prosperity gospel. But that is not what Moses is talking about here The prosperity gospel says God is your genie. He is your genie the true gospel is I command the blessings, okay Not you It's totally opposite to the to the prosperity gospel.

The true gospel of wealth is that God sovereignly ordains. The prosperity gospel is, you do X, you get Y. And that's a false gospel. But here what we learn is that God's blessings are for those with a heart of obedience, and he actually pours out material blessings and fills up your... He gives you the ability to make the money that would actually fill up a storehouse.

And then there are blessings of the favor of God. In verses 9 and 10. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself. So this idea of God, one of the blessings of obedience is that God, He makes you a special people, a holy people, a holy nation. Maybe a peculiar people, but you're His.

And it just says He has sworn to you if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. So again, this conditional clause appears in verse 9 again. And then in verse 10 it says, 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. Isn't that interesting? You would think everybody would just be so lovey-dovey, we're such nice people.

We're such generous people, so forgiving and everything, and then everybody would just think so highly, no, they're afraid of you. That's what this says. And so, should people be afraid of the people of God? I think so. If people aren't afraid of you, maybe something's lacking.

I don't know. But there are a couple of different aspects of the blessings of holiness here. The first has to do with the disposition of the Lord and that he treats his own differently. They're special in that he establishes, he establishes you as a holy people to himself. How good it is to be owned by God.

How good It is that God would say, that's mine. That's my son. That's my daughter. I'm watching him. I'm hemming him in behind him before.

I've laid my hand upon him. Where can he go for my spirit? Whenever he has a thought, I know it. Before he takes a step, I've ordained it. So the blessings of favor, of the favor of God, are here.

And the second blessing is the blessing of distinction and fear. So again, you know, God is not promising that everyone will like us, but at the same time He is establishing us as His people. And then we come to the eighth blessing, blessings of plenty. This one is like many of the others, as you can see in verse 11. And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, in the produce of your ground, in the land which the Lord your God gives you." This is like what God, what the devil said to God.

He said, have you made a hedge around him? The devil wants to attack Job. Oh, so you've, oh, have you made a hedge around him and around his household and on every side? You've blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land." That's the devil talking. And then the devil says, you know, it's because he's rich is why he serves you.

Let's test it. God says, let's test it. Let's test it. And these blessings of plenty, though, were gifts from heaven, but they were not the only thing that Job loved. And then their blessings of actual weather, weather and work in verse 12, the Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless the work of your hand.

So even the weather is favorable to those who obey. I can't explain that. I mean, tell that to Greg Fischl and the other weather prognosticators. But this actually just says that God opens rain for His people. He will in the land.

He blesses them. He favors them, actually, with weather. In Leviticus 26, again, the companion text, verse 3, if you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season. And the land shall yield its produce and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit." So it's a fruit of obedience. Does that mean that if you obey, then somehow you just always get the nicest weather?

No, that's not what is being said here. What is being said, though, is that God pours out His favor, even in the weather, for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. We just got back from this Washington tour. There are a number of times where the weather just miraculously changed, and a new nation arose that the world had never seen. It changed the whole shape of the globe.

Weather, weather, God uses weather. And then number 10, blessings of capital for lending. Blessings of capital for lending, verse 12 at the end of it. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. This again gives us the principle capital is good.

And having lots of it can be a good thing. And of course, there are dangers of capital, as we see in the Song of Moses. You are fat. You are obese. Often, when God gives capital and resources, then they forget him.

And then they require another cycle of chastisement. Here we have the idea that borrowers are slaves to the lender. What does that say about our whole mentality in our culture? But here, what's being praised is the ability to lend, to accumulate capital so that you can actually lend. And then 11, the last blessing, blessings of leadership, the blessings of leadership.

And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will be above only and not be beneath. That God will, with the obedience of His people, will give them leadership and preeminence in the world as they obey Him. And then finally we come to verse 14, the last verse, in this section of blessings, where he summarizes the conditions again, where he says, if you heed the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them, So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today to the right or the left or to go after other gods to serve them. These blessings are for those. And so here we find God's blessing of diligence and great care, that he is to be careful, to observe in this phrase, careful, emerges many times in the book of Deuteronomy, that there is this diligence and this area of care that's necessary.

And here's why it's important that we really consider this. Because of the grace of God, we often are not diligent like we ought to with our sins. We're not careful to keep the commandments of the Lord our God. We're careless. We use the grace of God as an excuse for licentiousness.

And we think because God is so kind that it doesn't really matter that we are the way that we are. And so we find ourselves just continuing to repeat old patterns that we have in our marriages with our children, our work, and all of those kinds of things. It's interesting, Moses says something very interesting in chapter 32, verse 46. And he gives us a child, actual child raising principle on this matter of being careful. And he says, he said to them, set your hearts on all the words which I testify among you today, which you shall command your children to be careful to observe all the words of this law." Parents are required to command their children to be careful, to be really careful.

So children, can I have your attention for a second? If your parents are telling you to be careful about something, and they keep bringing it up, you better be careful. They are obligated before God to warn you to be careful and not to be loose about it. This is their duty. They are blessing you when they do that.

They are coming alongside to help As a helper from God to command you to be careful to observe all the words of this law. This is parents responsibility. Not to just let children go into any wasteful or sinful kind of behavior, but to stop it. Maybe some of you parents have been laggards in this, that there are things going on, there are things that your children are seeing and doing, there are there are wastings of time, there are meditations that are that are not exemplary, and you have not put a stop to it. You have not done this.

You have not commanded your children to be careful. You must command them to be careful. And so Moses ends this with this whole principle of carefulness. OK, application. I'm going to run really hard and fast on these applications.

I think I have seven of them. So I'll try to squash them down. Now, okay, application number one. This text contains a secret of success in your marriage, and it's one of the, it's the most important thing perhaps of the blessing of your marriage. And that is this.

The success of your marriage ought to be considered very personally. In other words, your success in marriage is really dependent on your obedience before God, not the obedience of your spouse. It's always easy to find something that our spouses need to obey. But what Moses is saying is, if you want blessing for you, then you obey. That's your responsibility.

And of course, as a help need and as a head, husbands and wives are meant to help one another in their areas of sin. And that's so important. But there is in this text a tremendous principle for marriage, and that is if you want to deal with your marriage problems, then you go here's your You don't need to find another wife You need you need to find another track another career track. It's the career track of obedience You need to obey God and relate to that young lady the way that you are commanded to relate with her. That's your job.

And same with a wife as well. Here's another application. Particularly for anyone who's fearful about obedience. There's a very important application and that's this. Nobody ever lost anything by obeying God.

Nobody ever lost a thing by obedience. If you're being held back because you think there's some taste in the world that's going to help you, forget it! That is an illusion. If you wait because you want to taste something, you're just tasting poison. But, do you need to change your whole view of obedience?

Because nobody ever lost anything by obeying God. Nobody. You only get the best when you obey, even though it goes against your own nature. Here's another political theory. I think our political theory needs to be sharpened by this text.

The impact of sin and how it should shape your politics and how it should shape your view of candidates and policies. Sin is the problem. Disobedience matters and what we'll find is disobedience has dramatic impact on the whole nation. So this should shape our political theory. We're not just dealing with moving little policies around chessboards.

Politics has to deal with sin, somehow. Well, the civil government's given the sword, that's why, because there's sin. And here what we find is mentally, spiritually, socially, physically, economically, everything collapses when people disobey God. Our political theory should be governed and founded, really, on obedience to God and God alone. If not, then there's collapse, like we see around us everywhere.

Again, another application. My view of sin might need to be adjusted. It's often wrong. If I don't see consequences to my sin, if I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of free of all these terrible results of sin, that's just not true. We're blind if we think that.

That our sins are serious, but our obedience is such a blessing to us. It challenges what we might feel about prosperity, not the prosperity gospel, but the blessings of wealth. And then it should also increase my compassion. Because there are those who grope at noonday, like a man who gropes in darkness. And they are just degraded by confusion of heart.

And they may want to commit suicide, it gets so bad. But there are people out there that we're not speaking to, that we need to speak to, who are lost, who do not have Jesus Christ. This text should fill, just enlarge our hearts for the suffering, for the defiled that we bump into all the time that we look at and say, well, how can you talk like that? How can you dress like that? How can you do that to your body?

What are you doing? But no, it should give us the compassion of Jesus Christ, because there is a river of life that springs eternal, that the well can be cleansed, that obedience can do something that is such a blessing. So it should enlarge our hearts. It should give us a great passion for evangelism It should fire our hearts and not allow us to walk by like we have so many times Well, no one was ever justified by obedience or the works of the law. But everyone who ever obeyed received the blessings from that obedience.

The Lord Jesus Himself in Matthew 25, after speaking of the terrible judgment that awaits those who do not obey, that do not obey. He said, Then the King will say to those on his right hand, come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Hey, what a good kingdom it is. What a wonderful government God's government is. He is such a source of blessing.

And I'm so grateful that He is. Where would we be without the blessings of Almighty God, so undeserved? And yet, this text stands as a challenge to all of us. That we should carefully examine our lives to see if there are any disobediences that are depriving us of the blessings that God has so explicitly explained in this text. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord, we pray for insight. We pray for humility. We pray for revelation of the knowledge of your will, and all these things. We pray, Lord, for an outpouring of blessing in this church and in this community from our obedience. Amen.