heavens and earth – Praying Pint

50.w. Wilderness – 15.b. “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse”

Deu 11:16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the LORD is giving you. “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the LORD your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea. No one shall be able to stand against you. The LORD your God will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread, as he promised you. “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.

God had to warn Israel against the deceptions of prosperity. The person who turns from God in prosperity is simply deceived. They believe they are somehow responsible for the blessings received and become proud and self-reliant. It is good for us to have things that keep us in constant dependence on the LORD. We should never despise those things and long for the day when we will no longer need to depend on God as much.

God called Israel to not only read the Word of God and to know the Word of God, but to treasure it. In the same way, we should love God’s word and miss it when we are separated from the Word of God. We should call it to mind with longing, having laid it up in our heart and soul. God’s Word was to be the topic of their conversation. We can fairly measure our love for God’s word by how much we will talk about it with others. God doesn’t want us to have a secret love relationship with His word. To love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him: All the commandments are summarized in these three phrases. Each of these speaks of more than a bare and compelled obedience; they speak of a real relationship of love between God and His people, with obedience flowing naturally from that relationship.

Many desire God to fight their battles but have little interest in obeying Him – or cultivating the deep relationship of love which obedience grows from. When Israel walked in love with the LORD and was obedient to Him, they were unbeatable. No man could defeat them. Greater was God who was with them than he who was in the world!

The three great elements to the Old Covenant were the law, the sacrifice, and the choice. Israel had a choice – to obey and be blessed, or to disobey and be cursed. It was a cause and effect relationship with God. It is important to recognize that we, in Jesus Christ, do not have an Old Covenant relationship with God. We expect to be blessed, not because of our obedience, but because of our position in Jesus. The curse we deserved was laid upon Him (Galatians 3:10-14). Though there may be an inherent curse of consequences in our disobedience or even in the correcting hand of God, under the New Covenant, He does not punish us or curse us – because all that we deserved, past, present, and future, was poured out upon Jesus.

It was up to Israel. If they wanted to be blessed, then they should walk in obedience (as they were in the days of David and Solomon), but if they disobeyed, they would be cursed (as they were in most of the days of the later kings). A choice was required. There was no neutral ground. God wouldn’t just “leave them alone.” It would either be blessing or cursing. A choice was required. There was no neutral ground. God wouldn’t just “leave them alone.” It would either be blessing or cursing. (Guzik)

34.w. “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.”

Matthew 22:29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

Job 19:25-27    For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God,  whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

Psalms 16:9-11    Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.  For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.  You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Isaiah 26:19    Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.

Jeremiah 32:17    ‘Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

Genesis 18:14    Is anything too hard for the LORD?

Acts 26:8    Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

Mark 12:27   He is not God of the dead, but of the living.

In this world, death takes away one after another, and so ends all earthly hopes, joys, sorrows, and connections. How wretched are those who look for nothing better beyond the grave! If a person does not understand scripture they will not understand even less of faith in the Power of God. It is possible for a person to have much Bible knowledge, yet not fundamentally know the Scriptures. The Sadducees denied supernatural truths such as the existence of angelic beings and the bodily resurrection. They had a fundamental doubt about the power of God to do beyond what they could measure and understand in the material world; many today are like the Sadducees in this respect.

“If you knew the power of God, you would know that God is able to raise the dead…If you knew the Scriptures, you would know that God will raise the dead.” (Poole)

Know this, God will raise the dead, some to eternal life and some to eternal torment. To know Jesus Christ and have a relationship with Him, having faith in Him, relying on Him, trusting Him, following Him, obeying Him, is much different than knowing of Him and putting your trust in the knowledge of Him rather than knowing Him. Resurrection from the dead will happen just as eternal judgment will happen. Having a knowing relationship with Jesus Christ assures the promise of eternal life just as not knowing or having a relationship with Him promises eternal torment. A person intentionally chooses to have this trusting and reliant relationship with Jesus or not. This choice will result in your eternal destiny. Every person is without excuse for the whole and entire Word of God proclaims this from beginning to end.

11.t. “Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt.”

Nahum 2:10 Desolate! Desolation and ruin! Hearts melt and knees tremble; anguish is in all loins; all faces grow pale!

Isaiah 13:19-22   And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.  It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there; no shepherds will make their flocks lie down there.

Zephaniah 2:13-15     And he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste like the desert.  Herds shall lie down in her midst, all kinds of beasts; even the owl and the hedgehog shall lodge in her capitals; a voice shall hoot in the window; devastation will be on the threshold; for her cedar work will be laid bare.  This is the exultant city that lived securely, that said in her heart, “I am, and there is no one else.” What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts! Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist.

Isaiah 14:23     “And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” declares the LORD of hosts.

Isaiah 34:10-15   Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.

Joshua 2:11     And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

Isaiah 13:7-8   Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt.  They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame.

Splendor, pomp, prosperity, pride, greed, self-worth, self-centeredness, and self-reliance are all things we can recognize in others and seldom in ourselves. The hardest heart to look into is the one in the mirror. Why is that? When things are going smoothly we take a step back from God and His active Word in our lives becomes complacent. When things are going rough, confusing, hurtful, painful, and without hope, we run to God and seek His Word to be active in our lives. What kind of follower of Jesus Christ would honor and glorify His grace and mercy by acting like this? We weren’t saved only to come running to God and seeking His intervention when things go south on us. We were saved to honor and glorify Him in both good and troubling times. When we actively and intentionally choose to be in His Word, seeking to humbly live, glorify, honor, follow, trust and obey, we will soon find that deep-rooted sinful nature, we point at so often in others, is also within our hearts. We don’t hear much of sin and the need for repentance as much as we used too. I think some in their effort to lead people to Christ, offer Him up as a cure-all for all there problems and tack on “and also for your sin”. It should be the other way around. No one can come to Christ and be born again unless their hearts are pierced by the word of God and leading of the Holy Spirit about their sin and the need for forgiveness. Any other reason to come to Christ without dealing with sin is meaningless. Without having a heart, mind, and soul desire of God to expose our sin to us, we will meander around life apart from Him and only seeking Him in times of trials. We were saved to become disciples of Him to proclaim forgiveness of sin, to set the captive free from sin, and to live apart from sin. How can we do this if we are not actively seeking God to show it to us through His Word? We have fallen deep into the hole of worldliness and the mirror to our soul is not root in the Word of God but rather in the culture we live in and what they see as right in their own eyes. Now is the time to repent and turn away from sin. Now is the time to seek God with humble hearts. Now is the time for our lives to reflect thankfulness for the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for our sin so that we might have life and life more abundantly for His honor and glory.