Please turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 28. Deuteronomy chapter 28. If you're using the black Bibles in the pews, you can find this on page 168. If you are, if you can read Swahili, you will find this passage printed on the back of your sermon outline, tucked in the bulletins. Hear God's Word, Deuteronomy 28, verses 1 through 14. And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds, and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket 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 you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. The Lord will establish you as a people holy to Himself, as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, and in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail. And you shall only go up and not down if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them. And if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. The book of Deuteronomy is the renewal of God's covenant with Israel. It takes place at the edge of the promised land of Canaan, the land which God had promised in his original covenant with Abraham to give to his people. And it had been hundreds of years since God promised the land to Abraham, and now he was finally going to give it to his descendants. But before they enter, the people need to know what kind of conduct God requires of them. So he gives them his law, just as he had given it to their fathers a generation before. And even before Israel enters the promised land, the book of Deuteronomy sets the stage for the exile that will happen hundreds of years later. God threatens exile as a curse for disobedience. But before we look at the curses of the covenant, we need to look at the blessings of the covenant. Blessings that the Lord promises will come through faithfulness and obedience to him. We just read the Ten Commandments a few minutes ago, and we looked last week at the Great Commandment, the central command to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. But there are many other commandments as well, commandments that took these central commandments and applied them in greater detail to the people of Israel. Let's look at these for a couple of minutes. In the law of God, we see first what we might call ceremonial laws. Israel was to destroy idols and pagan places of worship, and instead worship and feast in the place that God appoints. They were to observe the food laws, the laws that forbade them from eating certain things. And they were to tithe to give a tenth or more of their income to care for the Levites and the poor and strangers and sojourners among them. Idolatry was taken very seriously. Idolaters were to be punished with death. They were to resist apostasy, anybody calling them away from the worship of God, and they were to resist false prophets, those who preached that they should follow another god and whose predictions came true, they were to stone to death. Those whose predictions didn't come true, they were to ignore. They were to keep the food laws and other purity laws, tithe their food and their money in order to feast, as well as to provide for the Levites and the poor. They were to keep the annual feasts of unleavened bread, including Passover, the Feast of Weeks, which we call Pentecost. Today is, in the Christian calendar, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. And Booths, or Sukkot. Human sacrifice and divination and cult prostitution, which were all practices of the pagans who had lived before them in the land, were absolutely banned. And the first of the harvest each year has to be presented to God as an offering. But laws were also given about the care and protection of the poor. The people were commanded to lend freely to other Israelites and not charge them interest. And their debts had to be released every seventh year, was to be a Sabbath year. Israelite slaves must also be released every seventh year and provided with good things as they leave their master's household. There was provision for perpetual voluntary slavery as well if people wanted to remain in the household of the one they were enslaved to. Land boundaries were to be protected. Escaped slaves were to be protected. Lending to Israelites at interest, again, was forbidden. Gleaning in vineyards and fields, the right to go into a vineyard after it had been harvested and pick any grapes that were left over, or into a field and pick any grain that was left over, that was commanded and protected as a provision for the poor. Kidnapping and enslaving a fellow Israelite was punishable by death. And beyond this, God made provision also for good trials and judgment, justice. Judgment must be just, and bribes were not to be given or received. Priests were to serve as judges in serious crimes such as homicide, and their judgment has to be obeyed. When a king is chosen, there are limits on his power. He must not take a lot of wives, and he must handwrite a personal copy of the law of God. There were no police in those days. If someone killed your kinsmen wrongfully, you were to hunt down the killer and get vengeance. But God set aside certain cities as cities of refuge where killers could flee and get a trial before the elders of the city. A man hanged on a tree could not be left there overnight because that brought a curse both on the man and it defiled the land as well. Regulations were given for the conduct of warfare, including how an enemy who agreed to peace should be treated, who was obliged to go to war, and whether the trees in a defeated city were to be cut down. The answer is no, don't cut down the trees. And in a polygamous society, rules were given to keep women from being too badly treated. Female captives of war were to be given time to mourn before being married to their captors, and they could not be sold as slaves afterward. The firstborn child of a man was his heir, even if he wasn't the child of the man's favorite wife. Divorce was also regulated in order to keep it from being too hard on women. A man dressing like a woman or a woman dressing like a man was forbidden as being disgusting to God. Laws were given concerning virginity at marriage, adultery, fornication, rape, and incest. Most of them end with someone getting stoned to death. This was both to enforce God's standards for sexuality and marriage and to protect against the cycles of vengeance and honor killing that still go on in Muslim countries today. A rebellious son had to be stoned to death. A lost animal had to be returned to its owners and the hurt livestock rescued. The roofs of houses had to be equipped with a railing for safety. Trade had to be fair and weights and measures accurate. What do we do with all this? How do we think about this? Well, there are two main ways that modern Christians think and talk about the law of God. The first is what almost all Christians do today, which is just forget it. They believe that the Old Testament law is relevant only to Israel and that it passed away when Jesus came into the world. And in fact, most Christians are either totally ignorant of the law of Moses or view it as an embarrassment, something to brush aside in conversations with their non-Christian friends and neighbors. And critics of our faith play to this. They say Deuteronomy bans transgenderism, but it also bans mixing wool and linen in cloth. Are you against mixed fiber clothing too? The second way that Christians tend to handle the law is held by a small number of people, and it reacts to this rejection by teaching that the Old Testament's laws to be applied by modern nations as a whole. So whatever the law was for Israel, that should be the law for the United States or China or Congo as well. Both sides have good points to make. There is a change, a deep change that comes when the Son of God comes into the world and fulfills the law. Paul says that we are not under law but under grace in Romans 6. But Paul also says that the law is good if one uses it lawfully in 1st Timothy 1. And the God who revealed himself in lightning and cloud on Mount Sinai is also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus, we see the heart of this God. The Old Testament is the holy will of God for this people at this particular time and place, the ancient Near East where they live. It is tied to the land and the ethnic heritage of Israel. It responds to the habits and the evils of ancient Eastern culture. Now, we, at least those of us who grew up in America, find this law to be very harsh because we're used to a culture that is horrified by violence, except of course violence against those we judge to be non-persons, the unborn, criminals, and the citizens of far-off countries. But in many cases, it is far gentler than the law of cultures surrounding it. It extends protection to the poor. It extends protection to slaves. It extends protection to unloved women. It extends protection to foreigners. And it even, in Exodus 21, extends protection to the unborn. It prohibits excessive punishment for crimes like theft. And at the same time, the law of God in Deuteronomy and the other early books of the Old Testament shows us the holiness of God and his hatred of idolatry. Precisely because worshiping anything less than the true creator and lawgiver degrades and destroys human beings. So in many ways, keeping the law is itself the great blessing of the covenant. But there is more. And it comes up in the passage that we were just reading. There is more. God promises to pour out blessing on the people as a people if they will obey Him. Listen to the rehearsal of these blessings. I won't re-read it, but I'll summarize it. If Israel obeys God's commandments and they don't turn to other gods, He will set them high above the nations of the earth. They will be blessed in the city and blessed in the field. They will be blessed with children and fruitful orchards and fields and cattle and sheep. The fruit basket will be full and the bread will rise in its bowl. They will be blessed when coming and blessed when going. Their enemies will fall and be scattered when they go to war. They will be established in holiness. The name of the Lord will make other nations afraid of them. The storehouse of heaven will be opened and rain will pour out of it." It should remind us both of the flood at Noah's time and of Malachi and God's promise of blessing, opening up the windows of heaven and pouring out His blessing. They will lend to other nations a sign of wealth and power and generosity and not borrow from other nations, a sign of poverty, vulnerability, and even slavery. The nation of Israel will be the head and not the tail. They will rise up and go higher and not fall and go lower. Notice that the blessings begin and end with being lifted up. The Lord your God will set you high above the nations. You shall only go up and not down. And notice also that they will be holy. And these blessings, even more than the rest of the blessings God promises, point to this reality. We become like whatever we worship. We become like whatever we worship. If we worship dead idols, we die. But as God is high and lifted up, so His people will be high and lifted up. And as God is holy, so His people will become holy. And the blessings of the Creator, the One who made all things and holds all things in His hand, will be with them, giving them victory in war and abundance in peace, blessings of the womb in the kneading bowl, blessings of trade in the city and agriculture in the fields. They'll be established and rooted and blessed in the land. The land does not become their savior. Only God can be their savior. But the land which had not always been theirs, they would have to conquer it soon, became their home. And they would not be removed from their home. Who would not want to be this people? Are there better things in this world to enjoy than the blessings that are listed here? And we need to take these promises seriously as promises to us. that a people in any age and place who obeys the Lord will enjoy His blessing. Their trade and their growing will prosper. They will multiply and not decline. They will be holy and be lifted up and become more like the one they worship. These are promises to us. Why? Because we are of the faith of Abraham, as Paul says, and we receive the blessings of the covenant of Abraham, including these. Now we've looked at this important point on our way to understanding exile and return. That God has laid down requirements for his covenant people in the promised land. If they obey his law, they will be tremendously blessed by him. But this raises a question, or rather a pair of questions. When someone is enjoying the good things of this world, does that mean that they have obeyed the commandments and honored God? And when someone is suffering greatly in this world, missing out on the good things, does this mean that they have disobeyed and dishonored God? You hear what I'm saying? If someone is doing well, does that mean that they have obeyed God? And when someone is having a hard life, does that mean that they have disobeyed and dishonored God? Is that how it works? Well, we know from experience that this isn't exactly so. We see bad people do quite well for themselves at times, while lovely, devout Christians go through hard, hard things. We do see the innocent suffer. In our own country, those who call on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of Christ, are suffering many setbacks. We have, as some observers on the right and the left said, lost the culture war. Truly, as the psalmist says in Psalm 94, we have wicked rulers who frame injustice by statute. Secular humanism, on one hand, and Islam, on the other, are rising and asserting their strength. Another psalmist cried out, my feet almost stumbled for I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Well, I want to make three points about this. As we think about this disconnect, we see in the covenant that blessing goes with obedience and cursing goes with disobedience. We'll look at that next week. But we don't always see that in our everyday lives. Why? Why do bad people do well at times? I want to say three things. First, the covenant is for the covenant people. The covenant is for the covenant people. God has made a covenant with all creation, promising blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. We all entered into the curse when Adam sinned against God. The curse of death grips the world to this day, and it will until Jesus comes back. But God entered into a special covenant, a covenant of grace with those he loves. He promises full salvation and eternal life for those who trust him. And he makes particular promises of blessing for those who are in covenant with him. When we see the wicked of the world prospering, we are seeing not covenant blessings, but we are seeing the patience of God, which the scriptures make clear is intended to call people to repentance. If God is kind, he's showing them his kindness so that they will seek his face. Second, the story is not over yet. The story is not over yet. As Asaph concluded in Psalm 73, the story of life is not over yet. If you're an adult, you have lived long enough to see apparently secure and powerful people overthrown. You've seen dictators overthrown and even executed. You've seen evil men go from apparent security and impunity to prison. You've seen womanizers caught and their lives devastated. You've seen wickedly acquired fortunes lost. And the full and final justice of God is yet to come. The day when, as Paul puts it, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men in Christ Jesus. And the end of each believer is blessing, no matter what today looks like. Asaph writes at the end of Psalm 73, nevertheless, I am continually with you. You hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward, he means after death, you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. The covenant is for the covenant people. The story is not over yet. But most wonderfully, the great clue, the great revelation that God gives us as to the meaning of history, as to the meaning of our own lives, comes in the lamb who was slain and rose again. Most wonderfully, we see the true picture in the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When God's Son came into the world, He suffered with sinners. He suffered like a sinner. He took no wife. There were no blessings of the womb coming to Him. He had no place to lay His head. He raised no harvest, and He ate from the donations of other people and the gleaning of grain. He went without bread at times, the blessing of the kneading bowl. He became the tail and not the head. If this is what is true of our Lord and Master, we have to conclude that for Christians, and everyone in fact, all blessing is not deserved, and all pain is not deserved. The precious lamb of God was slain in order to purchase us for himself and bring us into the covenant blessings of God. Without his having kept the covenant for us, the covenant can do us no good. We have all sinned and fallen short of God's glory. But in Christ, we are strengthened for obedience and taken through the valley of the shadow of death in all its forms to enter the great blessing. the land that was promised to the people of God, to inherit both heaven and earth as Jesus promised. The blessing of the Son of God comes to us through His exile and His return. His exile even from the land of the living and His return in triumph on the third day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, like the psalmist, we struggle when we see the wicked in the world doing well, when we see them succeeding in the things that they seek to do, and when we see people who know you, fear you, and love you going through great trouble. And yet Lord you sustain us even through that. We are not destroyed even by death itself and you will take us safely through the valley of the shadow of death because your son Jesus Christ has gone through it first. As a good shepherd not only pointing the way for his people but leading the way for his people. And so we rejoice, Lord, that your covenant blessings do come to us through Christ, that we who deserve no good thing from your hand are blessed. You strengthen us. Whenever we obey you, you reward us for it, even if it's only in the knowledge that we have done what we should. And yet, Lord, we see over and over again in our lives you blessing us for our obedience to you. We rejoice in that, but we pray that in the same breath, that when Your blessing is removed from us, when You call us to obey You, even though it does us no good in this world, that we would look to Christ, we would look to His cross, and we would see that You will call us, too, through exile, even through death itself, to return in resurrection, joy, and triumph. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.