Lesson 40 - Deuteronomy 29

[Music] [Music] now last week we finished up examining this long list of threats it was in Deuteronomy 28 the God made upon Israel should they violate the terms of the Mosaic Covenant and these threads are called curses some of them are pretty extreme now in fact chapter 28 actually prophesied that Israel would take on these curses because inevitably in time they break the covenant I went into some detail on the matter of separating the two different terms curses and the curse or as we better know it the curse of the law curses refer to the individual penalties that are associated with the various trespasses against God some mild some fatal the curses that rather the curse refers essentially to death into evil the curse is more or less the sum of all the curses that ends with personal and at times as in this case of Israel national destruction but perhaps most terrifying as that being subject to the curse means that one's name will be blotted out we'll explore exactly what having your name blotted out means when we get to that verse I spent perhaps a little more time with the meaning of the curse then perhaps some might think that it's necessary however it is a term that we find useful in a handful of crucial verses in the New Testament and almost universally within the church institution its meaning has been terribly misconstrued probably one of the 10 most quoted verses in the entire New Testament is Galatians 3:13 says Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us for it is written cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree now this verse is exhibit number one in most denominations doctrinal beliefs that revolve around the law being inherently negative or bad or a faulty institution that thankfully the Lord is now abolished and the explanation for this is that Paul says the law is the curse in other words the phrase the curse of the law is like saying the curse of cancer cancer is itself a cursive thing the law itself the way it's typically explained explained is a cursing thing nothing could be further from the truth it ought to be clear to you by now that the law of the Torah consisted of three primary elements the laws and the commandments the lists of blessings for being obedient the lists of curses for being disobedient the curses of the law are just one element of the law they represent the consequences the violations or rather the penalties for the violations but notice Paul says the curse singular not curses plural don't ever think that this is a trivial matter Paul even went into some detail in explaining the difference between the seed singular coming from Abraham versus the seeds plural and why this difference was so important Paul was an excellent communicator he did not carelessly mix up singulars and plurals the curse of the law condemnation is what happens to a person when one chooses death and evil over goodness and blessing by intentionally falling away from God the curse of the law is eternal death its eternal separation from God it was that way then nothing has changed what Paul is explaining is that Yeshua became the object of the curse of the law in our stead so he follower of Jesus will not have the possibility of eternal death the curse hanging over our heads for our misbehaviors however the individual penalties the curses that do not involve eternal separation from the Lord remain it is dispensation theology that says that the Lord has turned over administration of his justice system to human governments and to a degree I'd agree I agree with that we steal we go to jail we murder we stand to be executed we cheat somebody we usually have to provide reparations if we're caught so this notion that there are no divine consequences for believers for our earthly misbehaviors except perhaps we might get one less jewel in our crown in eternity is simply man-made doctrine it's not Scripture the Lord will either of direct divine intervention or by means of human government that he has permitted discipline us when we violate his laws and its commandments but the thing that has been set aside for believers is the curse of the law eternal damnation because Christ became Damned in our stead on the other hand the curse of the law hovers like the Grim Reaper over those who do not trust him non-believers are already condemned by the curse of the law in very brief summary so there can be no doubt what I'm saying to you first the law is not a curse Paul never said it was or frankly Paul would have gone against Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and he probably would not have survived under Jewish law even one more day and second the consequences the curses from breaking God's laws remains up to a point and third a believer is indeed subject to facing consequences for sinning but those consequences do not generally speaking include eternal damnation now what we are about to read in Deuteronomy 29 is usually called Moses's third discourse by Bible academics in other words Deuteronomy is largely a three-part message a sermon by Moses given prior to Israel actually entering into the land of promise and each part of the three-part message Moses has repeated expanded and explained more in depth about the Torah but the law is given at Mount Sinai and all of its intents and purposes as of the start of this chapter Israel is still in the border state of Moab they're waiting God's order to move forward and to take the land Moses has given the law now to the second generation of the Exodus the bulk of the first generation not all having now died out in the wilderness as a divine judgment of their refusal to go in and conquer Katyn Canaan 38 years earlier chapter 29 is essentially Moses asking this new generation to ratify the covenant just as their parents had now it's quite enlightening when we see then Israel had covenant ratification ceremonies at three places at Mount Sinai in Moab and then immediately a crossing the Jordan and entering the promised land three places three different territories three covenant ceremonies and in Midian in Moab and a Canaan and part of the reason for this lies in the ancient beliefs that each identifiable territory had its own identifiable set of God's Midian had its gods Moab had its gods Canaan had yet another set of gods Yehovah was indigenous to none of these territories in the minds of the ancients the Hebrews by the way fully believe this they had no understanding whatsoever that there was but one god jehovah who was god of everything and everyone and everywhere and we really don't even see the Lord press this issue very hard with the Israelites in fact the Lord sort of went out of his way for work within those beliefs no matter how off the mark they were as he developed Israel over time as his people therefore from the standpoint of the Hebrews God was establishing himself as the highest God in each of these territories that the Israelites entered after all since Israel up to now had no territory of their own you hallway had no territory to rule over in their minds therefore God would in their thinking have to confiscate a territory from some other gods and then make it his own that was the mental processes each time they held a covenant ceremony the Hebrew saw the Lord as establishing himself not as the only god of that territory that is the ill but as the highest god of that territory recall from much earlier Torah studies that it was the norm for Middle Eastern cultures to have a god hierarchy with one God as the highest and then the rest more or less under his with his authority the term used in Canaan Canaanite for highest God was ill al the Canaanite word ill was adopted and adapted into the Hebrew religion and it became the Hebrew word el yeah like in hell should I elroy el elyon so on and so forth but it still meant the same thing and it brought with it the same mental picture the highest God among the several gods of that particular territory it's just that for the Israelites jehovah was there el the idea of monotheism hadn't fully taken hold in their minds just yet so let's read now Deuteronomy chapter 29 Deuteronomy chapter 29 if you have a complete Jewish Bible in his page 230 then Moshe summoned all Israel and said to them you saw everything at a night did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh to all his servants and to all his land the great testings which you saw with your own eyes and the signs and those great wonders nevertheless to this day a tonight has not given you a heart to understand eyes to see our ears to hear I led you 40 years in the desert neither the clothes on your body nor the shoes on your feet wore out you didn't eat bread you didn't drink wine or other intoxicating liquor this was so that you would know that I am at and I god when you arrived at this place said hon the king of Heshbon and oak the king of Bashan Vance against us in battle and we defeated them we took their land gave it as an inheritance to the rubra knights the gadites and the tribe of monisha therefore observe the words of this covenant and obey them so that you can make everything you do prosper now today you are standing all of you before I deny your God your heads your tribes your leaders your officers all the men of Israel along with your little ones and your wives and your for and your foreigners here with you and your camp from the one who drops your would to the one who draws your water the purpose is that you should enter into the Covenant of Adonai your God and into his oath which Adonai your God is making with you today so that he can establish you today for himself as a people so that for you he will be God as he said to you and as he swore to your ancestors to Abraham Isaac and Jacob but I am NOT making this covenant and this owes only with you rather I am making it both with him who was standing here with us today before Adonai our God and also with him who is not here with us today for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt how we be how we came directly through the nations you pass through and you saw that their detestable things and their idols of wood stone silver and gold that they had all with that they had with them so let there not be among you a man/woman family or tribe whose heart turns away today from had and I our God to go and serve the gods of those nations let there not be among you a root varying such bitter poison and wormwood if there is such a person when he hears the words of this curse he will bless himself secretly saying to himself I will be all right even though I will stubbornly keep doing whatever I feel like doing so that I although dry will be added to the watered but I'd and I will not forgive him rather the anger and jealousy if add and I will blaze out upon that person every curse written in the this book will be upon him I don't I will blot out his name from under heaven ad and I will single him out from all the tribes of Israel to experience what is bad in all the curses of the Covenant written in this book of the Torah when the next generation your children who grow up after you and the foreigner who arrives from a distant land see the plagues on of that land and the diseases which ad and I has made it sick and that the whole land has become burning sulfur and salt that it isn't even that it isn't being sown or bearing crops or even producing grass like the overthrow of Saddam gomorrah admah and this voice this volume which ad and i overthrew and is furious anger then all the nations will ask why did that and i do this to his land what is the meaning of such frenzied furious anger people will answer it's because they abandoned the Covenant of Adonai the God of their fathers which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt they went and served other gods prostrating themselves before them gods they had not known in which he had not assigned them for this reason the anger of AD and I blazed up against this land and brought upon it every curse written in this book and AD and I in anger fury and incensed with indignation uprooted them from their land threw them out into another land as it is today things which are hidden belong to a deny our God but the things that had been revealed belong to us and to our children forever so that we can observe all the words of his Torah the first thing Moses does is to remind Israel of their Redemption history and he reminds them that some in this crowd that stands before him those who were very young at the time were eyewitnesses to the awesome wonders the Yehovah strike Egypt with in order to free and redeem his people now simple math tells us that the oldest living Hebrews it this time outside of Joshua and Caleb in Moses were approaching 60 years old although a few older ones might have survived but would die in a matter of a few more days when Israel left Egypt the age of accountability was essentially the same as the youngest age a male could serve in the military and that was 1920 years old so when God condemned that accountable exodus generation to die out in the wilderness and never be allowed to enter Canaan that only included people who were around 20 years of age and older at that time therefore many thousands of young Israelites who were well into their late teens at that time personally witnessed not only God's God's plagues upon Egypt but also the covenant that was given to them at Mount Sinai however since they were not yet at an age of accountability they couldn't personally accept the terms of that covenant but their parents could agree for them that said once each miner reached the age of accountability he or she had to now personally agree or not to be a member of that covenant community so we see this God pattern emerge the parents of an Israelite child who was not yet at the age of accountability could include their child in the covenant provisions in fact as we're going to see this concept plays for in the sense that every future generation of Israelites that is born is considered to be automatically born under that covenant with some caveats we don't need to get into however once that same child reaches an age of accountability he or she must declare for themselves their personal allegiance to the Covenant or they're no longer considered as covenant members in a broad sense that is the purpose of a Bar Mitzvah ceremony and it's why reading from the Torah a child reading from the Torah is a very key element to it we would call this event when a child reaches the age of accountability and declares allegiance to God for him or her self a covenant renewal ceremony and that is exactly what we're seeing here in Deuteronomy chapters 26 through 30 a covenant renewal ceremony now this notion is probably familiar to everybody who's listening depending on your upbringing and whether you're a Jew or Gentile and which denomination you might be involved in the matter of whether a child is under the Covenant protection of God and what age is considered the age of accountability that varies but the concept remains the same in Deuteronomy is the source of that concept if one goes strictly according to Scripture then the age of accountability is basically the age that military conscription can occur at the same time until the age of accountability that child is under the same status as their parents if the parents are under the Covenant their child is under the Covenant but if the parents are outside the covenant and their children are outside the coven it works the same way of course with the New Testament until that child makes a profession of faith on their own now Moses says he says you know many of you personally witnessed the wonders of Egypt and Mount Sinai but then in verse 3 he says that despite that the Lord has not given you a mind to understand he's not given you eyes to see nor ears to hear meaning they do not understand the meaning of it all I want to tell you that is a really powerful statement something to think deeply upon there's an interesting play on words in Hebrew that we kind of miss because of the English translation it essentially says you have seen but you don't see but it also says that even though you have ears you don't hear what it actually says that even though you have ears you don't Shema you may eventually get a little bit tired of me and reminding you about this but as Shema does not mean to just here to listen inherent in the words meaning is that you are obedient to what you've heard without doing what you heard you have not Shema anyone who has gone to church or synagogue but for a few months knows that there are many who come and here they hear the sounds of the words the sentences go into their ears they understand the words in the sentences and they register but there's just no response this is what Moses is getting at you have ears Oh your sensory organs are registering these words up to now you're not doing what the words command you to do altogether this verse that speaks of minds that do not understand eyes that do not see ears that do not hear are describing spiritual blindness don't misunderstand this first though this is not at all like a rabbi or a pastor chastising his congregation by telling them that they are spiritually blind rather Moses is saying that up to this point God had not given them the gift of spiritual awareness but now he has and so they are finally ready to accept the Covenant and to perform its terms and a much fuller sense than merely by mechanical actions do this don't do that doesn't matter why just do or just don't and I told you as we entered chapter 26 the first of this special four chapter section that there were great mysteries there prophecies and there's unrevealed things in it that have confounded Hebrew sages and sages and Christian scholars like this statement about God having not given his Hebrew people the minds to understand or the eyes to see your ears to hear is one of those mysteries I mean let's face it taken in its plaintive sense this means that God must give each of a spiritual awareness we can't begin to properly carry out his instructions to us I'll put it another way spiritual awareness can be withheld by God until when if ever he deems he once want you to have it and without this spiritual awareness there is no hope of comprehending the significance of God's laws and commandments and his Redemption plan and the process there's no hope now I can recall a visit with my wife's father when she was witnessing to him and I recall his insistence the try as he might he could make no sense out of the Bible he reads it but it's just words these words yvaine his ability to comprehend now understand this was an intelligent and educated man he was a retired school teacher who was frustrated because he could see that the bible was words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters but it just didn't have any meaning to his mind it was gobbledygook about 6 months before he passed away he accepted Christ as his Savior and he spent much of his remaining days reading and enjoying and finally comprehending the Holy Scriptures there's only one reasonable conclusion I can come to it takes divine intervention to give us the perception necessary to understand the divine Word of God yet here were his redeemed people wandering around out in the desert armed with the laws of Moses but constantly finding themselves in trouble with God because of their disobedience the implication is that the while the Lord had given them the law he had not given them the ability to understand its underlying meaning and spirit the highly acclaimed Jewish Torah scholar Jeffrey Teague a who by the way is not a believer in Christ comes to this conclusion from what we just read here in Deuteronomy he says this seems to imply that God does give the heart the capacity for faith but he only does so for those who seek him a man must have the desire to obey God and only then will God help him to do so that seems right to me faith trusting God that's the key the key rather the law was given to Israel not because they were seeking it were they seeking it not as far as I know not because they were faithful they weren't but because God was faithful but even the giving of the law at Mount Sinai did not automatically relieve the Israelites of their spiritual blindness only those Hebrews who had faith those who trusted Yehovah they were given the unlock code to God's Word only those who love God only those who wanted to be obedient were given the minds to understand the eyes to see the ears to hear naturally this pattern is sent forward and is the basis for the New Testament and for our modern lives Galatians 3 - I want to know from you just this one thing did you receive the spirit by legalistic observances of Torah Commandments or by trusting and what you heard and are being faithful to it as TA discovered for himself Moses was saying that receiving the law is a separate issue from receiving the ability to comprehend the law God has already given the gift of the law even to those who aren't looking to receive it but the gift of understanding it as divinely intended only comes to those who personally seek Him seek Him and trust and a desire to be obedient to him Paul is saying precisely the same thing when we determined by our wills to seek God and to be obedient to him and we understand sufficiently to accept that our Jewish Messiah Yeshua as our Redeemer then we're given the Holy Spirit we're told the Holy Spirit is our teacher the Holy Spirit is the church IRA's unlock code to the Word of God without the Holy Spirit we may certainly be able to read the words of the Bible we could even memorize and recite them some extent do them but without the Holy Spirit will never be able to understand them understand their intent and do them in the spirit it was meant and doing the law without trusting God is a hollow meaningless endeavor and it does not please the Lord that is in fact the true definition of legalism now verse 5 makes the comment that while out in the wilderness the Israelites did not eat bread they did not drink wine nor strong drink and this was so they might know the Lord now look this isn't a diatribe against wine and shakaar strong drink any more than it's a diatribe against bread it is simply saying that rather than the staples of the Hebrew diet bread and wine the manna and quail and drank water all things that were provided for them supernaturally bred let him is the product of human endeavor wine is the product of human endeavor mana came ready it just poured out from heaven quail was not raised and fed and bred and carefully he came ready he literally fell out of the sky the water didn't come from wells that they dug canals that they dredged or cisterns that they built to capture flash flood waters whatever naturally available water from a spring wasn't available God simply provided it from the most absurd improbable source rocks and all of this was so no Israelite could take any credit for the provisions of life and sustenance during all those 40 years out in the wilderness most of which amounted to an exile now that my friends is mercy a couple of things to take notice of wine and strong drink is perfectly allowable according to the scriptures there's nothing wrong with alcoholic beverage wine fact is the biblical symbol and metaphor of joy Yeshua turned water into wine because weddings were to be joyful and the wedding he and his mother were attending were running short of wine and therefore running out of joy why was wine associated with joy because people got a little tipsy they forgot some of their cares they felt less pain in their bodies they laughed a little more they put some of their worldly burdens aside for a little while wine tasted good it smelled good even strong drink what today we might call beer or even hard liquor was acceptable but of course not to the point of drunk and irresponsibility notice the three spheres of existence that the systems of life for Israel came from manna from heaven quail from the sky the heavens and water from the earth heaven the spiritual world the sky the heavens what we see when we look out at night and see all those stars and the earth terra firma that we stand upon God is sovereign he is Lord of all these spheres Lord of all these areas that represent not only what we see the the the known universe but also the invisible and the unknowable spiritual realm he provides our needs from every one of these areas our God is an awesome God now from verses nine through twenty we witness the actual covenant ratification ceremony and the first words of this ceremony are you stand this day all of you before the Lord and the words stand is significant and Hebrew the word is neat soft needs soft and it means that you are presenting yourselves to the Lord now recall that I mentioned that the Hebrew language does not employ tenses their words doesn't have past present future rather they employ something called perfect and imperfect or complete and incomplete I mean the same thing the idea is that something has been established and now it's completed or that something has been established and it's ongoing but it's not yet completed here it's off is used in the perfect sense it is not saying that at this moment you are now presenting yourselves to the Lord it means you have been presenting yourself to the Lord and you continue to present yourself to the Lord and the text goes to great lengths to include include every last person even traveling and among Israel leaders men and women children foreigners woodchopper water dryers are the lowliest of all tasks so this means that no social group was left out all of these people are present at the Covenant ratification ceremony and they're all standing there all presenting themselves just as they have been to the Lord and the people were present to be given an opportunity to become a member of the covenant community or to reaffirm through membership a covenant that verse 12 says is a covenant with its oaths or other versions saying a covenant with its sanctions these are correct translation but they missed the point what this verse means is a covenant with its curses the Hebrew is barren Vala which most literally is a covenant guarded by curses in a sense this was a caution it was a warning not to enter this covenant lightly because the breaking of its terms could be fatal to you not surprisingly this same warning is found in the New Testament for those who would enter into the Israelite covenant by means of issue of sacrifice in 1st Corinthians 11 26 for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaimed the death of the Lord until he comes therefore whoever eats the Lord's bread or drinks the Lord's cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of desecrating the body and the blood of the Lord yet a covenant guarded by curses well this was a rather common phrase used throughout the Middle East it was used to describe treaties between a powerful King and the vassal cities and states that he ruled or these treaties always had the purpose and the term spelled out the obligations both sides agreed to finally the curses that would happen to the vassal state if they broke that treaty so the Israelites fully understood the sober and serious nature of what they were gathering to do a wonder if we modern believers take it all that seriously then the Lord makes it abundantly clear that Canaan was the land he had promised to Israel and I've always been the Promised Land it was not any suitable territory that the Israelites wandered into and preferred it was not left up to chance or serendipity or to the vagaries of history or human politics it's awfully easy to see the Land of Israel is just a place where lots of Jews live why is it so necessary that it's that particular spot in fact much of the world today still asked that question since the Muslims insist that the land the Jewish nation sits upon ought to be theirs why not just move the Jews there's not that many of them to some other place that won't cause such trouble and in fact about a century ago just such a thing came within a hair's breadth from actually happening the father of Zionism Theodor Herzl 100 years ago was approaching various governments around the world to try and acquire a place for a Jewish homeland he wanted Palestine of course but the Arabs were having none of it finally the British offered him a large colonial territory that they had lost interest in today we know this place as Uganda the World Zionist Congress had heated debates on whether they ought to accept this British offer and in a very close vote he rejected Uganda is the new Jewish homeland and the rest as they say is history even if they had voted to accept Uganda it would not have represented their return from exile as promised by the prophets the land of Canaan is special to God for his own good reasons the promised land is not any old land sufficient to house Israel it's a very specifically divinely ordained place God was making that clear to the second exodus generation he made it clear by His divine providence in the late teen hundred eighteen hundreds and he's making it clear still today but does the church have the eyes to see and the ears to hear the world certainly doesn't and I Got News for ya lot of Jews don't either the Lord says he is not only making that covenant with those standing before him today in Moab but with those who are not here today since the previous verse makes it clear that every living Israelite was present to hear Moses this is referring to all the descendants of those who were present the future generations interestingly the Midrash Don Huma deals with this exact matter and it says that the pre-incarnate souls of all future Hebrews were present at this covenant ceremony so they too heard Moses and became part of the Covenant now we might want to call that pretty fanciful thinking but modern Christianity in general accepts a very similar doctrine that every soul that will ever live was created in the beginning and is with God until he creates that individual in fleshly form and he puts that eternal soul within him or her even if you don't accept that interpretation at least the Covenant is being offered to all Hebrews of the future generations just as the New Covenant is offered to all future generations of humanity not only the ones that were there when Yeshua came so starting in verse 15 Moses cautions that the covenant community must keep their wits about them they must be on watch for anyone who has taken the oath of the Mosaic Covenant but then turns around and decides that now that they've declared that they're part of the Covenant they're safe and sound and protected well they can just go on as they please without regard to the terms of the Covenant this is illustrated as a man or a woman who would remember the nations that that horde of three million Israelites wandered through on their way to Canaan and remember the gods of gold and silver that those nations worshipped and then choose to serve those false gods such a person is viewed as bitter poison and wormwood in other words they're dangerous to the community at large because they might entice others to do as they've done I don't want you to understand as much as exactly this scenario happened in Israel's history and we read about it at length in judges and in the books of the prophets it was rare that a Hebrew would renounce God and take up worshipping other gods in his place rather they would simply go on with what we talked about a few minutes ago they would see him as the L they would see God as the highest God of that territory and they would keep him but they'd had a few lesser gods to the repertoire this felt perfectly reasonable to them they'd go to the temple they observed feasts they bring in their ties they'd sacrifice at the brazen altar but then they'd also have all these little wooden and stolen idols of other gods in their homes and they pay homage to them as well often in secret so their neighbors didn't know needless to say they were shocked when gods curses fell upon them with their usual excuse being but God didn't we call on your name we read of the scenario over and over Ignasi 'm in the books of the prophets some of you know right were that's leading to I think this pattern naturally represents itself in the New Testament as well and the falling away and the worshipping other gods may just be as prevalent within the institutional Church today as it was with the Hebrews in the days of the evil kings of Israel who is not heard this often repeated phrase of Christ who said in Matthew 7:22 on that day many will say to me Lord Lord didn't we prophesy in your name didn't we expel demons in your name didn't we perform many miracles in your name and I'll tell them to their faces I never knew you get away from me you workers of lawlessness here in Deuteronomy 29 yah Jose was warning through Moses that while Redemption and signing on to the Covenant were good things that one had to continue in their trust and obedience to maintain their position within the covenant community you think that changed with Christ but as with so many doctrines of this sort well as the vast bulk of the evangelii of Christianity thinks it did the Holy Scriptures tells us the opposite in Romans 11 19 so you'll say branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in true but so what they were broken off because of their lack of trust however you keep your place only because of your trust so don't be airing it on the contrary be terrified because if God didn't spare his natural branches he won't spare you take a good look at God's kindness and his severity on the one hand severity towards those who fell off on the other hand God's kindness towards you provided you maintain yourself in that kindness otherwise you will be cut off hmm you know it's very concerning to me that too many of us think we can get up from a Pew walk and I'll say the words pray the sinner's prayer and then figure we've completed our obligations to God we're done now that we've now joined the new covenant community and we have no duties no rules no obligations no consequences for actions there is not one scripture and the Old Testament or the new that would imply such a thing the only reason this kind of thought even exists within far too many Christian doctrines is to deal with the supposed imagined problem of legalism and works as a means to salvation that somehow or another to obey the written scriptural commandments of God is now legalism to do good and righteous deeds to try to gain our salvation through self-justifying works supposedly is what that means I believe it is time for the church to repent of this I believe it's time to re-examine these issues before it's too late for millions of churchgoers who honestly think that they are safely within the congregation of the Lord and but they have no interests in this word they have no interest in being obedient to him I mean verse 19 is downright terrifying says the Lord will not forgive those who fall away in this manner and at the sum total of every curse on the law will come upon that person and that you hope they will blot out his name from under heaven I mean I told you at the beginning of today's lesson we were gonna find out what blot out his name means for most of you I think the meaning of this has already become clear it's speaking of eternal death it is speaking of the curse of the law it is absolute condemnation one who signs on to the Covenant and then falls away will suffer the same fate as those who worship the golden calf he will suffer the same fate as God imposed on the Amalekites the permanent wrath of God and permanent separation from verse 20 explains that the Lord will single people out for this fate and it will be done in accordance to the terms of the Covenant the would-be apostate person should not think he can just kind of get lost and hide somewhere among the covenant community and escape his fate because he'll go undetected nor should he think that all divine punishments into sight and disciplines occur only at a national level experienced by the community as a whole rather the Lord will deal with covenant violators on a person-by-person basis and there's no hiding from it and one of the purposes for you have a condemning apostates individual by individual and dealing with them in the most horrific ways if so others who come later will see what happened to them the cursed will be a sign for future generations do not test the Lord you don't want to do that now I want to point out something interesting that is now said that sheds lots of light on something of a puzzle that goes all the way back to Genesis these verses used the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as well as the cities of admah and zeboiim as illustrations of the complete annihilation that apostatize errs can expect and it says that these cities were so completely devastated by sulfur and soul that they were beyond any ability to produce crops are even pasture land for wild animals these cities were essentially thrown into the lake of fire abandoned by God and man forever recall that lot and his family were rescued by an angel that evil city of Sodom and that as they fled they were instructed do not look back but Lot's wife disobeyed what happened to her she was turned into a pillar of salt we're told of itself salt is a good and useful thing it can preserve it can season but salt can also be destructive the idea is that even though Lot's wife was given the opportunity to escape destruction fact she had already escaped it she still didn't trust she fell away from God and she wound up suffering the same fate as she would have as she just stayed in Solomon stayed in Sodom with all the pagans she turned to salt she became the same agent of soil destroying poison salt that made Sodom and Gomorrah uninhabitable unusable you see it was usual for a powerful king who had treaties with many smaller vassal cities to come and utterly destroy that city if they rebelled against him it would be a warning sign to his other vassals not to follow their lead and in the process the king's men would bring sulfur and they would bring salt and they'd spread it all over the arable land the two chemicals combined made the land utterly unusable for anything the sulfur created a foul odor and the salt poisoned the soil so that nothing would grow that Lot's wife was a pillar of salt ought to be better translated as a monument of salt that is she became a sign she became a warning a hazard marker to all who would think to turn back from their Redemption and from their Redeemer Jeremiah 17 6 he will be like a tamarisk tree and the air of awe when relief comes its unaffected for it lives in the sun-baked desert in a salty uninhabited land Matthew 5:13 you are salt for the land but of salt becomes tasteless how can it be made salty again it's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out for people to trample upon I'll finish up chapter 29 next week and move into Deuteronomy 30 please rise [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes you issue you [Music]

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Published: Wed Jan 02 2019