I'm going to be reading from Deuteronomy 6, verses 1 through 9. Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that as we dig into it, we would come to realize the beauty of your law, and with David say, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all of the day. Cause us, Father, to rejoice and to find great insights into your law, and with David we say, open my eyes that I may see wondrous things out of your law. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So how many here remember the big controversy this past spring with Andy Stanley? Any people remember that? Just a few of you. It was a big blow up in the evangelical circles. Andy Stanley has been touted as being one of the twelve most influential pastors in the English-speaking world. He's an evangelical pastor, supposedly, but he has anything but evangelical presuppositions. And anyway, the controversy started with an April 30, 2018 sermon, which I listened to last week because I wanted to make sure he was not being misrepresented in any way. He claimed he was being misrepresented. If anything, he was underrepresented. His sermon was absolutely horrible. You listen to some of his other stuff and it's just part and parcel of his philosophy. But anyway, in this sermon, He said Christians must unhitch their faith, their moral values, and their entire worldview from the Old Testament Scriptures. In fact, he insisted that Christians are falling away in college, he says, by the droves because of the Old Testament. It's the problem with the Old Testament, especially when science comes into conflict with Genesis and when modern morals come into conflict with the law. So implied in that part of his message was that it's a great thing that we don't have to believe in Genesis because we're New Testament Christians. It's a great thing we don't have to believe in Deuteronomy because we're New Testament Christians. Just bypass all of these controversies in our culture by saying that's not our book. Our book is the New Testament. And he kept saying the Old Testament has nothing to do with our faith. He even claimed that Christianity is not founded on a book at all. Let me quote him exactly, just so you're not thinking I've read too much into his statement. He said, the foundation of the faith for the early Christians was not a book. They didn't have one. It wasn't the Bible. There wasn't one. It wasn't the Old Covenant or what we call the Old Testament because that story, that didn't tell the story of Jesus. The foundation of the faith for the early church was an event. It was the resurrection of Jesus. Now that should instantly be recognized as heresy because it completely unhinges Christianity from the revelation of God. It makes it a very subjective thing. Now, um, I want to take a couple of minutes to contrast a sampling of his statements with what we have already seen in Genesis through Numbers. At one point in the sermon, he claimed that you do not see very much of grace in the Old Testament. But what have we been seeing already in this series? We have been seeing that Genesis through Numbers are absolutely saturated in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll be seeing the same is true of Deuteronomy. He claimed the Old Testament, quote, didn't tell the story of Jesus, unquote. Well, maybe he didn't recognize the story of Jesus in those books, but we saw that through typology. There was a rich Christology that has been presented in Genesis through Numbers, and Deuteronomy has much the same. In fact, we've seen that the Pentateuch very clearly states exactly the day that Jesus would be born on, what day He would die on. It talks about His life, His death, His substitutionary atonement. There is a very rich and complete, fairly complete Christology. On the law, Andy Stanley says. You are not accountable to the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments, because those are not your commandments." Now, if that was the case, why on earth would the Apostle Paul quote those Old Testament commandments word for word in Romans 13 and apply them to the church? Why didn't he reword them in some way if it's a completely different moral standard? And why did Jesus say that the New Covenant Christian who taught that Deuteronomy 22, verse 6, which is the least of these commandments—that's the commandment of the mother bird and the little bird in the nest—anybody who taught that that is no longer replicable is least in the kingdom of heaven. That's Matthew 8, 5, 19. Let me give you one more outrageous quote. Andy Stanley said, the Old Testament was not the go-to source regarding any behavior for the church, or as he worded it in another place in the sermon, the New Testament church was unhinged from the Old Testament, and you too must be completely unhinged from it. Now, in contrast, Acts 17, verse 11 praises the Bereans for checking out absolutely everything that the apostle Paul was teaching them against the Old Testament to see whether what the apostle was teaching was true. The Bereans were definitely not unhinged from the Old Testament, and Paul praises them for checking his apostolic teaching against the Old Testament doctrines. That was the Bible of the early church. And so what I thought I'd do is give seven quick reasons of why we should study the book of Deuteronomy. First, Jesus quoted the book of Deuteronomy more than he quoted any other book in the Bible, showing the importance of this book in his mind. So Jesus was not unhinged from Deuteronomy. Second, the Gospel of Matthew is so saturated in the thinking of Deuteronomy that Mark Biddle's commentary claims, quote, Matthew takes the theology of Deuteronomy as the basis for its argument, unquote. Another commentator called Matthew Deuteronomistic because it is so saturated in Deuteronomy. So the point is, if you're going to take the Gospel of Matthew seriously, you have to take Deuteronomy seriously. You have to. Third, Deuteronomy is one of the most frequently cited Old Testament books throughout the New Testament, almost 200 times the New Testament quotes. the book of Deuteronomy, and those verses that it quotes touch upon nearly every facet of Christian life and doctrine. Okay? Any honest scholar is going to say that if you study the New Testament, you're going to say it is founded upon the Pentateuch and particularly upon the book of Deuteronomy for Christian doctrine and life. Fourth, it is absolutely critical that the church understand what it will take for our nation to no longer be receiving God's curses. If you don't think we've been receiving God's curses, we have now for quite a while, and it's heating up. It's getting worse and worse. And if we don't have Deuteronomy, we're not going to know what it is that's going to be required to receive the blessings of God. Simply singing, God bless America, is not going to be sufficient. There's a lot more to it than that. Fifth, we'll be seeing that Deuteronomy gives blueprints for every segment of society, for rulers, church leaders, parents, military, business, children, you name it. Six, Deuteronomy 31, 9 through 13 tells us that every man, woman, and child in Israel, whether they were Jews or Gentiles, had to study the book of Deuteronomy. So the point is, it wasn't just a book for the Jews, it was a book for Gentiles as well. And then seventh, numerous New Testament scriptures call us to study all scripture, which includes Deuteronomy. Acts 20 verse 27 calls for studying the whole counsel of God, 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17, says that all scripture is profitable and we won't be, quote, complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work, unquote, unless we study all the scriptures. So those are seven great reasons why we need to dig into this book of Deuteronomy. Now, if you were to push me on what is the key passage of Deuteronomy, you notice I gave you two key passages. It would either be Deuteronomy 6, 4-9, the one we just read, or it would be chapter 10, 12-14. Now, I think most commentators and study Bibles that I've looked through have said it's the second passage, and since I'm going to be touching on Deuteronomy 6 later on anyway, I want you to turn with me to chapter 10, and I'm going to begin reading at verse 12. We'll just read a couple verses here. Chapter 10, verse 12, And now, Israel, what does Yehovah your God require of you but to fear Yehovah your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, to serve Yehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of Yehovah and His statutes which I commend you today for your good? I won't make a lot of comments on that verse. There's a lot of things in those two verses actually that I think the modern church needs to consider. They need to really think about. But let me just mention two. Those verses show that fearing God and loving God are not incompatible things. Second, it shows that loving God and keeping His commandments is not only incompatible, but it says, you don't love God if you don't keep His commandments. They really necessitate each other. With David, we should be able to say, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all of the day. And since this theme commands us to love Him with all of our heart and to obey His commands with all of our heart and soul, Knowing the weakness of our flesh and how easy it is to not do exactly what those verses say, the psalmist pleads with God, incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness. That's Psalm 119, 36. He prays, open my eyes that I may see wondrous things out of your law. Wondrous things. Deuteronomy is absolutely packed with wondrous And we're barely going to get into those wondrous things today. We're going to be giving a whirlwind tour. This is probably going to be my longest sermon in the Pentateuch. Sorry about that, folks, but that's the way it's going to be. It is an amazing book. I'd like to give a key word for every book, and most scholars say that covenant is the key word. I agree, but there are a couple of other words that reinforce that key word, covenant. In your outlines, you see a whole bunch of references to the covenant in Deuteronomy. But when you think about it, the whole book of Deuteronomy is structured like a covenant. It is a covenant. Even unbelieving commentators who have looked at that say, whoa, it is so obvious that it's shaped in the fashion of a covenant. The five parts of a covenant are right there on the surface of them, and we'll be looking at that. Now, the next key word, the word oath, is related That word is so tightly tied together with covenant that O. Palmer Robertson says that covenant and oath are used synonymously in the Scriptures. The one necessitates the other. And since Hebrews 6.16 says that oaths are always taken under authority, Covenants are always entered into by taking an oath under authority. So the second section of this book in the major outline, the second section deals with authorities in our lives, human representatives of God, which indicates that if you are not in covenant with human authorities, you're not in the covenant period. If you are dissing the representatives of God, you are dissing God Himself. Very, very important. You don't have a covenant without those representatives. Nowadays, people tend to reject the authorities of family, church, and civics, which means they have rejected the covenant. And even marriage covenants, I should probably comment on that, even marriage covenants are under, are made under some authority. Full marriage is not simply a contract. A lot of people think, oh, you just sign a contract. No. Deuteronomy defines a contract marriage as being a concubine marriage. This is one of the reasons why people who have gone through, you know, that informal process of getting married, I encourage them to retake their vows under an authority in order to make it a full marriage. The Hebrews always distinguished a contract marriage was a concubine. It's still a marriage, but it doesn't have all of the rights, all of the privileges. It's a concubine marriage, whereas a full marriage was oath taken under authority. It was a covenant. Now in Deuteronomy, Well, throughout the Bible you will see normally those authorities are the two parents. When those are not available, it can be another authority like the church. Maybe in a pinch it could even be a civil officer, but there would have to be some authority for a covenant to be entered into. Anyway, oath is the second key word there because God cannot swear by a greater authority than Himself. Well, he has to swear by himself, according to Hebrews. And I've listed a bunch of scriptures that call Israel to observe His covenant or to keep His covenant laws. So observe and keep are two more key words that emphasize covenant is the central theme of this book. And then one more word that's at the heart of the idea of this covenant is the word for covenant love. And you'll see in your outlines, that word comes up over and over again. God said that He gave His laws to Israel. Why? Because He loved them. He loved them. And He wants them to love Him by keeping those words. And there's three ways in your outline which God shows that you can demonstrate this love to God, this covenant love. The first is to express your love by remembering the past, being grateful to God for all that He's done in the past. We don't unhinge from previous generations. The second is to pay special attention to God in the present, especially in the keeping of His law. in taking dominion and developing relationship with God. And the third is by possessing or inheriting the land in the future. And so this is basically putting our plans under His Lordship, saying, Lord, we're making plans now to take the conquest of Canaan. We're making plans for the future. The future is a stewardship as under the Lord. And I love the symbol, and we're not going to talk about it much, but that symbol of the slave. Now slaves shouldn't do this. They should want freedom, and we'll see that later. But God deliberately put it in there because he wants us to take this attitude of having our ear pierced to the door and saying, Lord, I want to be your slave forever. I love you. I don't ever want to leave your home. Thank you for adopting me into your family as a slave. I would hate to lose out on that relationship. But over and over again in this book, God affirms His love for His people. He calls His people to a love relationship with Him. And love is so tightly connected with the covenant in Deuteronomy that one commentator said, reaffirming the covenant is renewing love. Every time you come to the Lord's table, it's like you're saying to the Lord, again, I love you, Lord. This is just another time where I never get tired of saying, I love you. So that first image on your outline summarizes Deuteronomy as being a covenant of love. I think that really summarizes the book rather well. And since Deuteronomy is frequently slandered as not talking about New Testament grace, not talking about the New Testament Christ, I want to very briefly show that Christ is the heart of this covenant, just as He was in the previous historical covenants. This book is absolutely full of types. I haven't even listed them all for you in your outline. Those are the major ones. Some people actually call Deuteronomy the Gospel of John in the Old Testament. Why would they say that? Let me give you some of the comparisons that show this really is like the Gospel of John. First, like the Gospel of John, it calls people to demonstrate their love to God by keeping His commandments. John 14, 15 says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Verse 21 says, He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. And there are similar other verses in John, certainly a lot of those kind of verses in the book of Deuteronomy. Like John, Deuteronomy is absolutely immersed in the Gospel. Now, we're not going to have time to do justice to the Gospel images, but we've covered them, and Exodus and Leviticus rather well, so I'll be very brief on that today. Like John, Deuteronomy calls people to put their faith in God. This is a book on faith. It's not contrary to faith. Like John, it's rich in theology. Like John, it calls people to covenant relationship. Like John, it emphasizes the Word of God as being the standard of truth. And so, if you want an equivalent to the book of John in the Old Testament, it would be the book of Deuteronomy. I love this book. So let me briefly outline the chief symbols or types that foreshadowed Christ. As we saw in Exodus through Numbers, Moses was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ in his person and work. In his person he was a prophet, a priest, and he was also a ruler. But in terms of his work of intercession, there are so many beautiful images of Christ in there. Joshua similarly stands as a type of Jesus. Hebrews 4, and there's a number of other passages, indicate just as Joshua took the conquest of Canaan with a physical sword, we're to take the conquest of the world, but not with a physical sword, with the Word of God. the Bible. We saw that the pillar of cloud points to Jesus leading his people. So where Joshua foreshadows Jesus as a human, so does Moses, the pillar foreshadows him as to his divine nature. We've dealt with the sacrifices of the sacrificial system I think pretty adequately in the past and each one of those Sacrifices beautifully teaches another facet of their future Messiah and his substitutionary atonement fact I am convinced especially so with this it was so tangible. They had to kill these animals. It was so tangible They knew this was a symbol of a coming Messiah who would be their Substitute and it would have blown them away that he would be willing to die for their sins incredible, amazing love and grace. The laws of the firstborn in chapters 12, 14, and 15 are also symbolic of Jesus, who is repeatedly spoken of as the firstborn who inherits, the firstborn who shepherds, and the firstborn who leads. We looked at the central sanctuary as a detailed symbol of Jesus. Hebrews 2.12 says, Christ, right now, is in the midst of His brethren. Well, you look at the camp picture, you know, and your outline, you see the tabernacle was right in the midst of the brethren. Jesus is repeatedly said to be our tabernacle. We went through the feast days adequately in previous sermons, but each one showcases the person and work of Jesus, as do the prophets and the priests in the next point. We looked at the cities of refuge last week. We saw how they point to Jesus as a refuge from our penalty in hell. So some people say, well, how much did the Old Testament saints understand about this typology? I'll be the first to admit, maybe some of them didn't understand. At least they didn't understand as much as we do about those types. But there are many evidences that the leaders actually knew at least the basics about the coming Messiah, fairly complete Christology, and they taught the people what these symbols meant. And I'll just give you one example. Long before this time, Jesus said about Abraham, Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. He's saying he was not ignorant of what was going on through even the sacrifices he engaged in. So I think they understood these types. They pointed to their coming Messiah. Now, there's one more in your outlines. It's the stone altar of chapter 27, and that represents the work of Jesus. And because I failed to comment on it in my Exodus one, I want to spend just a little bit of time commenting on it right now. In your outlines, you'll see archaeological find. It's a massive altar, and a lot of people believe this was the altar that was established at that time. Then there's an artist's rendition of what that what that might have looked like. Now it would have been all whitewashed, would have been all painted, but it was huge. So let me just go through a few of the symbolic features of this. The altar was elevated from the earth to show that Christ's sacrifice draws us to heaven. Only clean animals were offered on it as a symbol that the coming Messiah had to be perfect, sinless. He had to be a spotless sacrifice in our place. Verse 5 specifies that this huge altar could not be built with rocks that were quarried with human hands. In fact, the word for natural rock and quarried rock They're quite different in the Hebrew all throughout the Old Testament. Now, why would he forbid any tool to be used on a rock that was built for this? Well, any human ingenuity, any works of man are utterly incompatible with the atonement. And so he's saying the atonement is 100% the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The large boulders or rocks were painted white to symbolize the purity of Jesus. That white also made a background that they could write the law so that everybody could read it very, very well as well. The law written on that altar showed how God's law can only be kept by grace. This is not a legalistic book. This is a gospel book. Outside of Jesus, the law brings a curse. But when you connect the law with the sacrifice of Jesus, you've got blessing. You've got nothing but blessing. Okay, we're not under the law in ourselves, that would bring a curse. But the way some people translate Paul, we're under the law, some others translate it, we're in law, in law to Christ, we're under the law in Christ or through Christ, there's different translations of that. But it's through Christ we no longer have a curse, but we have the blessing of the law. All of the blessings, none of the curses. It's a beautiful, marvelous symbol. And I just barely skimmed the surface of the gospel images in this book. That's no exaggeration. It is absolutely rich, and this is why I say it is an absolute slander against Deuteronomy and against the Old Testament for Andy Stanley to say that it's not a gospel message. It is marvelous gospel. I mentioned earlier that the whole book is structured like a covenant, and almost all scholars nowadays recognize the five points. They may put different labels on them. For example, instead of hierarchy, they'll probably call it a preamble, but they recognize the same parts of this covenant model. Now, Ray Sutton tried to come up with an acrostic to help people remember things by, but I have found a lot of lay people are mystified by the acrostic. The acrostic is theos. It's like, okay, well, I can't remember that. Theos, what does that mean? Well, it's the Greek word for God. For me, it's a great acrostic. I love it, but theos, acrostic for God. So T stands for transcendence. H stands for hierarchy, E stands for ethics, O stands for oath, and S stands for succession arrangements that God has made. Now, people still don't understand those terms exactly, so Gary North came up with very clever rewording for the average layman. He puts it into modern lingo. He says, transcendence just deals with who is in charge of the covenant, who is making this covenant. And in the first eight verses, the preamble, he says, God's making this, Jehovah is making it. Hierarchy deals with the question, to whom do I report? God has his representatives in family, church, and civics, and were to obey them in the Lord, since they are his representatives, disobeying their lawful orders, is indeed disobeying the Lord. Ethics answers the question, what are the rules of this outfit? And that's where he gives laws. Now, in most of the covenants in the Bible, even outside of the Bible, this is the biggest section, the ethics section. How do I live? And chapters 5 through 26 give numerous applications of the Ten Commandments to show what they mean, and he gives those in the order that the Ten Commandments were given. Oaths calls down God's curses. if I break the covenant. So in most books, these are called sanctions, but Ray Sutton calls it oaths. Basically, it answers the question, what happens if I obey or if I disobey? Hey, I'm committing myself by oath to obey the laws of this covenant. So what happens if I disobey? Am I going to be punished? What happens if I obey? Will there be blessings or is this a covenant that really has no teeth in it? And chapters 27 through 30 deal with the blessings and the cursings of the covenant. These are inescapable blessings and cursings. They do happen. People doubt it, but they do happen. You can trace them through history. You can see it. And I'm going to want you as a congregation to respond to some of these with me later in the service. I'll read them. You can respond. The last section, Succession Arrangements, answers the question, Does this outfit have a future? Will there be a hope for covenant succession? And if so, how? And we're going to take a whirlwind tour now through those five sections of the book. First part of most covenants just gives a little bit of history. It identifies who's making this covenant. And most callers, as I said, just call this the preamble rather than hierarchy. That would be chapter 1, verses 1 through 8. Very, very typical of the preambles of other covenants. but very quickly all of the covenants move into the representatives of the Southern king who is making that covenant and to whom the people are going to be accountable. The Southern is going to hold them accountable to these representatives. So you cannot say you are in covenant with God if you are out of covenant with His representatives. In verses 9 through 12, Moses makes quite clear he couldn't lead the people by himself. There are way, way, way too many. So in verses 13 and following, representatives were chosen, and then there's a history that's given of how those representatives of church as well as of civics, how those representatives governed. And it gives a little bit of a history of that with Joshua taking over the reins of leadership for the nation as a whole. Now I want to spend most of my time on the ethics section, since it contains a good deal of the blueprints for life. And we'll skip over a lot that's in here, but I do want to give you enough of an overview of this that you'll see. This is an amazing book. It absolutely is. Concerning these laws, chapter 32, verses 46 to 47 says, set your hearts and 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, for it is not a futile thing for you because it is your life. And by this word, you shall prolong your days in the land, which you cross over the Jordan to possess. It is your life. These are the blueprints for life. And he starts in chapter five by giving the 10 commandments in summary form. and then takes quite a few chapters to unpack each one of these Ten Commandments and say, OK, here's the specifics of what each of these commandments mean. And most people want to skip over the first four commandments, and they want to go into the juicy stuff, you know, the social issues of Commandments 5 through 10. And they are fun commandments, but what I want to show is there are profound social ramifications for even the first commandment that has been given to us. Now, it's quite common for people to claim that the first four commandments no longer apply to civics. Some of you have read Joel McDermott's book on that. He's one of the newer ones to advocate that. My retort to them is that you cannot even define the application of commandments five through 10 at all without the first commandment. Sure, everybody's opposed to murder. But without the God of the first commandment defining what murder is, you're not going to know which war is murder, which war is not murder. You're not going to know when self-defense is murder, when it's not, or even if abortion is murder. Now, these people are aggressive pro-life people. I applaud them for their efforts in the pro-life movement. Praise God for that. But they insist that we cannot impose the first four commandments on our culture. Now, I try to convince them that this is so naive. When a pro-abortionist claims that abortion is not murder, is not a crime, where do my friends turn to in order to prove that abortion is murder? They rightly turn to the Bible, the Word of the God of the First Commandment, right? That's where they turn to. The abortionist could rightly retort, by appealing to the Bible, you're appealing to the God of the first commandment. Remember, you promised not to impose Yehovah as God on our society. All you can impose are six commandments, which I also agree are wrong. I agree that murder is wrong, but I deny that abortion is murder because I reject Yehovah's interpretation of abortion. To impose the Bible is to impose the God of the first commandment. That could easily be their logical response. And my position is that the first commandment shows who defines each of the other laws. By the way, I don't even think the Ten Commandments were written in two tables of the law. In other words, I don't believe that four commandments were written on one table of stone and there are six on the second table. There were two copies, two double witnesses each of which had all 10 commandments written on them. You cannot divide these commandments. It is logically impossible to divide these commandments up. So let's look at commandment number one. The commandment deals with protecting true theology, which includes true ethics, right? True theology and protecting the sanctity of God. There can be no other gods that command our loyalty or that define ethics. And you know, The gods our heart manufactures are so subtle. Life can become an idolatrous god, and it has become an idolatrous god in some pro-life circles. And by the way, life is many times defined in ways that people will overturn God's specific laws. For example, there are pro-lifers who say they're consistently pro-life by opposing the death penalty for murder. Well, that means they're defining the sixth commandment differently than God defines the sixth commandment, which means they're taking the prerogative of God. Again, it's a violation of the first commandment. Now, I want you to notice how much space is given to commandment number one. Six chapters. are devoted to teaching the implications of this commandment, chapter 6 through 11. So you can just see by the amount of space that God has devoted to this, God considers the first commandment to be very, very, very important. Chapter 6, verse 1 begins, now this is the commandment, And these are the statutes and judgments. Commandment is in the singular, and statutes and judgments is in the plural, because he's going to be dealing with a multiplicity of case law applications of one commandment. The first commandment, right? And by the way, some of the commandments that Joel McDermott would love to see enforced by the civil government are listed under the first four commandments. We'll see that in a bit. God obviously thinks they belong there. Anyway, this is the genius of Deuteronomy. The Ten Commandments are brought down to specific application where the rubber meets the road. You see, without application, people can very easily rationalize, oh, yeah, I'm keeping the Ten Commandments, no problem. And then you start going through the case laws and you realize, oh, yeah, I guess I'm not keeping them as well as I thought that I was. Take, for example, the abstract commandment, thou shalt not steal. What is stealing? And what is not? Without the case laws, everybody has a different definition of stealing. Is property taxes theft? A lot of Christians would say, oh no, that's not theft. Well, the Bible would say it is theft. All property tax, by definition, is theft. And I can prove that. Is a child stealing when he takes back his own toy that his brother has started using? Is that toy communal property or is it his property? Many parents never think through questions like this and they teach their kids to have a heart of socialism. And let's take the other issue. On the other hand, is that child stealing from God when he deliberately blows up his toys with firecrackers or abuses his toys? The Bible would say yes, because our ownership is a stewardship ownership. It's not a final ownership. Only God has final ownership of all things. It's a stewardship ownership. Is communism stealing? How do we know? Men might think that failing to tithe has nothing to do with this commandment, and God says differently. The point is that the specific application by way of precepts and judgments takes away all the rationalizations that people tend to give. And so you have the commandment singular, you have the statutes and the judgments that flow out of that. And I'll just illustrate it here, but you see the same thing on each of the commandments. In chapter six, one through 25, God shows the first commandment calls for radical loyalty to God. There can be no divided loyalties. That's the implication of the first commandment. And in your outlines, I list verses one through three as pointing us to a comprehensive obedience Verses four through five are a call to comprehensive love. Now, those verses are key, at least to this chapter, if not to the whole book, so I'm going to read them. Yehovah our God, Yehovah is one. You shall love Yehovah your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. This was the Shema Israel. It was recited every morning, every evening by Jews. It's something they memorized. It's probably worthwhile for each one of us to memorize as well. And the fundamental truth expressed is that Yehoah is one, and the fundamental duty that flows from that fact is that we ought to love God with our whole being. No divided love. The fact that there is one God necessarily implies that there is only one law order. Okay, to abandon God's laws for other laws is really to change God's. Or as Moorcraft would put it, to abandon the law of God is to abandon the God of the law. Well, that means America has long ago abandoned the God of the Bible, even though they forgot to take it off of our money, and they forgot to take it out of our Pledge of Allegiance, but they've abandoned God because they've substituted their own laws. Now, in these verses, God shows Himself to be Yehovah, that's the covenant God, and all of His dealings with man are covenantal dealings. People are either covenant keepers or they're covenant breakers. He is the Lord of all of life. But notice how this covenantal God is described, or at least it's hinted at, as a trinity. Yehoah, our God, our Elohim, is one Yehoah. The word for God is Elohim, which is in the plural. So God is a plurality of persons, and yet He is one Lord, a unity. Now, I don't have time to get into this. We could spend, and in India, when I was dealing with Hindus, I spent several lectures giving the implications of this and some of the Hindu leadership of the nation actually happened to be there and came up afterwards and just thought this was spot on and the difference between how Hinduism would impact culture and how Islam and how Christianity would bring freedoms. But, Your view of God profoundly shapes your culture. Islam, which holds to a radical unity in God, with no plurality, no persons in that Godhead, will have a totally different view of civics, family, love, ethics, than Christianity. You look at any of the commandments 5 through 10, and their view of God is going to interpret those commandments radically differently than a Christian should, radically differently. For a Muslim, The view of God impacts their view of markets. And so they really are opposed to a free market of ideas. And on the other hand, Hinduism, which is polytheistic, will have a quite different view of love, ethics, science, family, and culture. And I'll just give you one tiny example. Vishal Mangalwadi, quoted his Hindu neighbor as explaining why he had just casually killed his daughter and why it didn't bother him at all. His neighbor said, anyway, death is unreal. I'm too poor to keep her alive and get her married. Why submit her and my family to misery? Let her go now. She can come back to earth as a boy or be reborn when the pressures are not so unbearable for us and for her. And many such examples could be given that show your antagonism to the first commandment will bring out antagonism to the rest of the Decalogue and will be worked out in the rest of your life. And I'll just give a few more case law implications of the first commandment. Verses six through nine are a call to Christian education that applies God's word 24 hours a day, seven days a week to everything we do. One hour a day of teaching is not going to undo eight hours of discipleship by unbelievers in the government schools. There's no way. Now, according to these verses, which are placed under the first commandment, to send your kids to the government schools to be educated, where pagans will be discipling them into a hostile worldview, is a violation of the first commandment. Clear and simple. There is no way, I don't think you can get around that. And look at how radical this education needs to be. Verse 6 says that Bible-based education must reach the heart. Do you want what your kids are being taught to reach their hearts? If not, don't put them under it. Don't put them under it. Analyzing the curriculum is important, so is analyzing the teachers, because Luke says, that he who has been fully trained will be like his teacher. Do you want your kids to be like their teachers? Verse 7 says, we can't be haphazard in our teaching, but we must diligently apply the Word to all of life, to everything in the home, in society that we're walking in, to our sleep, and to our waking moments. That pretty much covers everything. In verse 8, we're to bind the law to our hand and forehead, symbolizing God's law governing our conduct and thinking. In verse 9, it's designed to transform our family life. That's symbolized by having the law on your doorposts of your house. It's supposed to transform your culture, symbolized by putting it on the gates of the city. And people wonder, okay, is this talking about a literal or a symbolical binding of the law to our heads? Are we supposed to wear phylacteries on our heads, for example? Well, if you take a look at the picture in your outlines there, you'll see that the phylactery is pretty small compared to the large role of just one of the books of the Bible. And we're supposed to have the whole Bible on our forehead, right? He's not talking literally. He's talking about a symbol that the whole Bible needs to govern our thinking, our seeing, our hands, our doing, our walking. So I don't take it literally there. In any case, those words show that there is no area of life that the law does not give blueprints for. And I've given conference lectures on how it applies to mathematics, physics, geometry, linguistics, and other areas. The point is that if our education and the education of our children is not grounded in God's Word, it is already loyal to a wisdom other than God's wisdom and has broken the first commandment. Verses 10 through 15. show how we can violate the first commandment by failing to do everything as a stewardship trust for the Lord. So our business, our grocery shopping, our all stewardship issues, they really need to be God-centered. Now, if you're anything like me, by the time you get to this point, you realize, I'm so far behind what I'm supposed to be doing in terms of God's law. It feels a little bit hopeless, but here, that's the point of Deuteronomy being saturated with the gospel. We're secure in the gospel. We're never judged because we don't fully line up with what God's law says. I love Kevin Swanson's statement. It's direction, not perfection. The gospel saves us, keeps us from condemnation, puts us on the road in the right direction. But if you see people turning the other way, they're going completely the opposite direction, then you can't use that phrase. You're completely outside the scope of what the gospel and the law intended. Verses 16 through 19 applies the first commandment to total accountability to God in everything. Verses 20 through 25 tells us to teach history to our kids in a God-centered way. History is not neutral. It is not neutral, and to say it is neutral is to be loyal to a philosophy of history that is hostile to God. When I was at Covenant College, we had two history professors, both of whom said publicly more than once that they would not teach history any different than an unbeliever would teach history. And I asked him, so why do we even have an expensive Christian college? This is ridiculous. Why don't we save money and go learn from a secular? And to me that's so offensive. It is a breaking, according to this, of the first commandment. God calls for providential history. All of chapter 7 symbolizes the total conquest of all of life under the feet of King Jesus. Now, we're to do so with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Bible, right? We're not to do it with the physical sword, but the principles remain the same. Abraham Kuyper, and I've put the quote in your bulletin, captures the essence of that passage when he says, there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human endeavor over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, mine. That is the import of chapter 7, in a nutshell. Chapter 8 contradicts the self-sufficiency, self-esteem, self-worth, self-assertion, self-love movements as being utterly incompatible with the First Commandment. Chapter 9, verse 1 through chapter 10, verse 11 opposes works righteousness as a failure. That's trying to earn your salvation through works. That's a failure to trust God's provision and is thus a violation of the First Commandment. This means all false gospels violate the First Commandment. Automatically they do. So can you see why Deuteronomy is not too popular among compromised Christians? They would love to just be New Testament Christians, and I tell them, no, you're not even a New Testament Christian, because the New Testament calls you to look to Deuteronomy. You are just not Christians in the way you're living and thinking. Chapter by chapter, the implications of the first commandment are drawn out in a very convicting way that shows that God pervasively claims all, and He wants loyalty, in all that we are, have, think, say, and do. Now I actually have an outline, small print outline, 19 pages long, just on the applications of the first commandment in Deuteronomy. So I've barely touched the surface of this, okay? That's why I put et cetera, et cetera. I should have put five or six et ceteras on there. The second commandment deals with protecting true worship and the sanctity of devotion to God. That covers all of chapters 12 and 13. Now in these chapters, God is calling us to love what He loves and to hate what He hates. Using types and symbols, it shows that we must be Christ-centered in our worship. And people say, well, shouldn't we be Trinitarian-centered? Well, if you're Christ-centered, you're automatically going to be Father-centered and Spirit-centered. Why? Because the three are one Lord, right? So it's not either or. The tithe is said to be, once again, a sign of something, whether we're going to be faithful to this commandment. It's a sign of stewardship. A symbol that all that we have belongs to God. By putting it under the second commandment, he shows that money can be an idol and tithing is a sign that God is our only God. Okay? First 11 verses of chapter 13 show how easy it is to make an idol of our family and for family loyalties to pull us away from loyalty to God. Third commandment, not only protects God's name, but also protects the sanctity of speech and of our testimony. The Hebrew of, take the name of the Lord in vain, is literally to wear the name of the Lord in vain. You wear the name of Jesus when you call yourself a Christian. It's a Christ follower, a Christian, right? And so how you live reflects upon His name. That's why Paul says people, you know, in their family relationships, you're blaspheming the name of God. Why? With the way you're bad testimony. So when you mourn like pagans mourn at a funeral, chapter 14 indicates you're not representing God's name well. Chapter 14 indicates funerals can be a testimony of joy and confidence in the midst of sadness. Much better way of wearing his name. And wow, once again he brings up tithing. Tithing and going to Jerusalem for the festivals while leaving the farm unprotected was a sign of faith in God's faithfulness. You reflect God's name in business and in other ventures. In fact, tithing keeps coming up as a test on our commitment to several of these commandments. The fourth commandment deals with protecting the Sabbath and the sanctity of time and dominion. In other words, Don't think of the fourth commandment as only dealing with one day. Actually, you read the whole, it's dealing with six days you shall labor, but it's saying, no, all of our time and all of our dominion belong to the Lord, and we keep the Sabbath as a sign, as a testimony of that fact. So why in the world does he deal with debt under the fourth commandment? That doesn't fit under the fourth commandment, does it? Well, though debt was allowed in some circumstances, God considered most debt to be a violation of our Sabbath liberty and to be a form of bondage. Well, conversely, you can look at what the implication there is, but when you look at the implication, then conversely, it helps us to interpret the Sabbath. If the Sabbath is engaged in, in a way that's bondage and And it's frustrating. You don't see the freedom that God has ushered you into. You're not keeping the Sabbath in the celebratory way that God intended you to keep it. Chapter 15 applies the Sabbath laws to ecology, giving rest to the land. The Sabbath reminded masters that they should train their slaves to prepare for liberty. Masters were supposed to prepare these irresponsible, slaves to become mature, responsible, future-oriented, and freedom-loving. He wanted these slaves to gain their liberty. His whole system was designed to move them away from slavery and toward liberty. That is the inescapable trajectory of any society that keeps God's law. In contrast, every society that rejects God's law inescapably ends up under bondage and tyranny and does not have the rest that God intended. The fifth commandment was designed to protect the family and the sanctity of all God-appointed authority. In chapter 16, verse 18, through chapter 17, verse 20, all civil authorities were told that they had limited, delegated, specified, enumerated powers, and they were accountable to God for how they exercised those powers. They could not make up laws on their own. Their laws had to be God's laws. Okay? Courts were to give God's righteous judgments, chapter 16, verse 18, not their own judgments. When civil courts couldn't figure out how to judge a given case according to God's law, they were supposed to call the priest who had been trained in the law, was an expert in the law, and he would give them his advice. And so even that shows that there is a very careful interaction, even though there's separate jurisdictions between family, church, and civics, there is an interaction of authorities between those spheres as well. Fantastic section that gives checks and balances to protect against tyranny, such as necessitating the court cases be public, the executions be public. No star chamber, no secret trials were allowed because it would lead to tyranny. Jurisdictional separation of the governments of family, church, and civics are also hinted at in these chapters. And so the fifth commandment, when you read that, you realize, wow, the fifth commandment's not just about our literal parents and our literal children, As the larger catechism's exposition demonstrates, beyond any shadow of a doubt, it deals with all authority relationships. Now, the case law applications of the Sixth Commandment are given in chapter 19, verse 1, through chapter 22, verse 12. And wow, there are a lot of applications. We cannot possibly list them all. Chapter 19 rules out any plea of not guilty due to insanity. There is to be no pity for a murderer whatsoever. Even an animal that kills a person has to be put to death. When you read through the Westminster Larger Catechism's exposition of the Ten Commandments, you're going to see a lot of the applications that are here listed there. These chapters deal with the cities of refuge with applications to citizens protecting other citizens against tyrannical civil magistrates. Very interesting. Chapter 9, verse 14 applies the protection of property rights to the Sixth Commandment. Now, why would that be? What does property have to do with thou shalt not kill? Well, the larger catechism, giving its exposition of the Sixth Commandment, includes verses referring to deprivation of food, water, medicine, or anything else that tends to support life as being under the Sixth Commandment, as being a kind of application of murder. To take away private property is to lessen the opportunities for future survival. God takes eminent domain very seriously. He takes taxation of property very seriously. Witnesses can destroy people's lives as well. So chapter 19 verses 15 through 21 deals with the importance of witnesses in court. We can either be good in our wars or we can be murderous in our wars, depending on whether we've engaged in what is called a just war, but it's biblically defined. And it called for peace through strength. You've heard me in the past quote Oliver Cromwell, trust God and keep your powder dry. Well, this chapter calls for a balance of trust in God, but the ability to hammer the enemy hard if they invade you. Interestingly, in terms of war, failure to give exemptions to military service was considered a form of murder. That's why it's listed under the Sixth Commandment. You cannot conscript people who don't want to be conscripted and who disagree with a given war. You cannot do so. And so there were generous policies to opt out. Chapter 20 deals with that. It granted exemptions to conscriptions for those with new houses who had not yet enjoyed living in them. Those with new vineyards who have not yet enjoyed harvesting them. An engaged man. The fearful. You could just say, hey, I'm scared. I'm out. It'd be easy. Those married less than a year. Those under 20 years of age. Any Levites who didn't want to serve. In verses 19 through 20, God absolutely forbade. Is it forbad or forbade? There's an E at the end. I guess it's forbade. forbade a scorched earth policy that salted fields and cut down productive trees, fruit trees. Why? Well, those verses say it's because it would remove the enemy's food for months and years to come and would thus constitute a violation of the Sixth Commandment. And you're scratching your head and you say, yeah, but you're trying to kill those guys. This would be a very efficient way of making sure they're never enemies again. But what he is saying is that even How we treat enemy combatants is not up for grabs according to God's law. There are limits of what we can do. Joe Moorcraft says, the Bible knows nothing of total wars such as Sherman's march to the sea, which included the burning and salting of the land in the war between the states. The earth is not to be warred against. The principle here, production and the continuance of life is more important than and must precede political goals even in times of war. Ecclesiastes 5, 9. Rushduni says, production is prior to politics. Without production, without the fruit trees and the farmer, the worker and the manufacturer, there is no country to defend. The priority of politics is a modern heresy, which is steadily destroying the world. Only the great vitality of free enterprise is maintaining the productive levels in the face of great political handicaps and interferences. In any godly order, therefore, production, freedom of enterprise must always be prior to politics in wartime, as well as in peace. Unsolved murders, you know. It gives us ideas on how, in the Gospel age, through Christ, we can cleanse the land of that. Discussion of a marriage to a captive is included under the Sixth Commandment to show the heightened way in which God protected the lives of vulnerable women. If even captive wives have such protections, how much more so Hebrew wives? There are some marriages that are like a living death, and God's law protects against that. These chapters go on to give helpful advice related to inheritance, rebellious children, what would be considered excess in executions, violence by animals, even transvestitism. Let me stop there. We can understand all of the other laws. Oh yeah, they beautifully fit under the Sixth Commandment. And why does he all of a sudden bring in transvestitism? Well, if you destroy the relationship that God intended for marriage to be a man and a wife, you destroy that male-female distinction, you are destroying the country. You are destroying the nation. And we are seeing the accelerated destruction of our nation before our eyes. Now, do you remember that I said that Jesus upheld even the least of these commandments in Matthew 5, 19? Let me read that command. There's general agreement that Jesus was referring to Deuteronomy 22, 6 through 7. That's what the Jews considered to be the least of the commandments in Jesus' day. Here's what it says. If a bird's nest happens to be before you along the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, with the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall surely let the mother go and take the young for yourself, that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days." It says, that it may be well with you, that you may prolong your days. It's definitely related to life, definitely related to the Sixth Commandment, but the question is why? Why would God place it there? Well, the reason is that true biblical conservationism, as opposed to modern statist conservationism, definitely has long-term survival in mind. And let me illustrate with Mao Zedong's disastrous attempt to exterminate sparrows in China. He was deliberately violating this law on a massive scale. He declared, and I quote, Birds are public animals of capitalism. He believed they were eating up everybody's labor. They were eating up all of the rice at the rice paddies. So every soldier and every citizen had a duty to destroy every sparrow that they saw. They received rewards for the amount of sparrows that they brought in. And let me read from Wikipedia on this very interesting phenomenon. As a result of this campaign, many sparrows died from exhaustion. Citizens would bang pots and pans so that sparrows would not have the chance to rest on tree branches and would fall dead from the sky. Sparrow nests were also destroyed. Eggs were broken and chicks were killed. In addition to these tactics, citizens also resorted to simply shooting the birds down from the sky. These mass attacks depleted the sparrow population, pushing it to near extinction. Furthermore, contests were held among enterprises, government agencies, and schools in cleanliness. Non-material rewards were given to those who handed in the largest number of rat tails, dead flies and mosquitoes, or dead sparrows. Some sparrows found refuge in the extraterritorial premises of various diplomatic missions in China. The personnel of the Polish embassy in Beijing denied the Chinese request of entering the premises of the embassy to scare away the sparrows who were hiding there. And as a result, the embassy was surrounded by people beating with their drums. After two days of constant drumming, the Poles had to use shovels to clear the embassy of dead sparrows. Bugs destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides. Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the great Chinese famine in which 20 to 45 million people died of starvation. Is there a logic in to including the least of these commandments under the Sixth Commandment? I think absolutely, yes, there is. And let me read you Matthew 5, 17-19. Jesus said, Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." There's a lot of other things in that chapter that we'll skip over, but case laws in the seventh commandment were designed to protect marriage and sanctity of sex. They protected a spouse against marital slander as well as against actual fornication, how to tell the difference. There are laws against rape, adultery, castration. There are even a section dealing with the proper disposal of excrement. Now, you might wonder, why on earth would God put the proper disposal of excrement under the seventh commandment? Well, because sex and excrement do not mix. There are other reasons for more hygienic approaches to sexuality, including health, but God clearly lists that under the seventh commandment because of the sanctity of sex. Playing with feces is not biblical. The eighth commandment, you shall not steal, protects private property and the sanctity of ownership. And these case laws deal with slavery, which is a form of stealing, unless, of course, it's the slave who's paying back what he has stolen. They deal with illegitimate interest on loans, broken vows, charity to the poor via gleaning laws, illegitimate divorce, the importance of newlyweds not being forced into the army, collateral for loans, kidnapping, owning, kidnapping, kidnapped slaves, spreading infectious diseases, overly aggressive collection agencies, employers, individual equality before the law, charity, and various other laws. focus on the three laws that everybody thinks those don't fit. And I said, no, they do fit. They very logically fit. Everything else people recognize, yes, that fits under this commandment, but what about chapter 23, verses 17 through 18? There shall be no ritual harlot of the daughters of Israel or a perverted one of the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the wages of a harlot or the price of a dog to the house of the Lord your God for any vowed offering, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God." Now, why would that be placed under the 8th commandment instead of under the 7th commandment? You know, it's obviously a breaking of the 7th commandment. But illegitimate business is also a form of stealing since it is an exchange of money that God forbids. For the church to profit from the tithe of unlawful labor is to share in that iniquity and in some ways to endorse it. And you can think of all kinds of broad applications you can make of that. Here's a second one. Divorce also breaks the eighth commandment according to chapter 24. It's included under the eighth because all illegitimate divorce robs the innocent partner and the whole family of an enormous number of things. There are nasty financial losses, losses of time, emotional energy, broken vows, friendship, intimacy, family dynamics, and other things. And I'll tell you what, anybody who has been wronged with a Unbiblical divorce will tell you he feels or she feels hugely robbed. People who just interpret chapter 24 as that's just the way things are has failed to account for why God placed divorce under the Eighth Commandment. The structure of the book helps us to interpret the book. Now I'll explain one more law that people have sometimes wondered about. Chapter 24, verse 5 says, When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken." Now we would think that that could logically be discussed under Commandments 5 or under Commandments 7, but why is it discussed here? God sometimes discusses the same thing, such as tithing, under three or four commandments, because doing so shows God's laws are interconnected. It's kind of different perspectives on the same thing, looking through different windows at the same problem. So let me comment on this one. The phrase charged with business is better translated by the New American Standard, as nor shall any public duty be imposed on him. He shall be exempt for one year. He still had work on his farm to do, but no public duty could be imposed upon him. Why is that listed under theft? Three reasons. First, it takes a while for a couple to adjust to each other, to develop friendship, to lay the foundations for a marriage that will last, and conscription steals that. God's concern for the preservation of the family is greater than his concern for the preservation of a country or a government. To draft or impress a man into service as soon as he is married implies the opposite. It implies the priority of civics over family. Second, society's security is stolen if the family is destroyed. And then third, the command to be fruitful and multiply takes precedence over war. And if a man is killed in war before he's been able to have any children, that family has been robbed of those children. The command to be fruitful and multiply is given in Genesis 1-28, and it is repeated in absolutely every age. Let me explain. The age of Noah gives that command to be fruitful and multiply, Genesis 9, 1-7. The age of the patriarchs, Genesis 35, verse 11. The age of Moses, Leviticus 26, verse 9. The post-exilic age, Malachi 2-15. The new covenant age, 1 Timothy 4, verse 3. Conscription during the first year of marriage is a form of robbery and it should be resisted. It should be resisted. The ninth commandment protects truth and the sanctity of our affirmations. Our words should be as good as gold. When you look at the case law applications here, you realize our nation is in deep trouble. When you look at what Moses said, Moses says that punishments that are arbitrary or that change Show that there is no truthfulness in your system of justice. And that is definitely describing our nation. It lists employers who give false expectations and do not fulfill them with their employees. Chapter 25, verse 4, and especially Paul's inspired interpretation, 1 Timothy 5, 18. Failing to follow through on a marriage promise, 25 verses 5 through 9. Unfair fights, 11 through 12. Wow, that is a very unfair fight. Inflation and dishonest weights and measures, 13 through 16. And obviously that last one is a form of theft as well, but it's also a lack of truthfulness. Failing to remember your history, to learn from your history is listed as well. And then finally, the Tenth Commandment was designed to protect the heart and the sanctity of contentment. According to Moses, this command intersects once again with people's lack of tithing. Chapter 26, verses 12 through 15, lack of generosity beyond the first dive. 26, 1 through 11. Now, obviously those are things only God can see, but our financial dealings often reveal a heart that lacks contentment. So having given the laws of the covenant, the next part of the covenant is the oath and the sanctions section. What happens if I obey or if I disobey? Well, God tells us in words that are both stirring and encouraging on the blessing side and incredibly scary on the cursing side, and that's chapters 27 through 30. A lot of blessings promised. But there are curses that cover everything from hemorrhoids and skin diseases to depression and fear to baked goods that don't come out right, mildew, sickness, war, tyranny, natural disasters, you name it. And rather than covering all of those, what I want to do is I just want to give the very abbreviated list of curses in chapter 27, 15 through 26, and at the end of each of these curses, it's gonna say, and all the people shall answer and say amen. When we get to the amen, I want you guys in faith to say amen, because there's something this does to us to bond us to God's law, to his law word. I think it is an important exercise. And I'm gonna start at verse 15. Cursed is the one who makes a carved or molded image, an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret, and all the people shall answer and say, Amen. Cursed is the one who treats his father or his mother with contempt, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor's landmark, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who makes the blind to wander off the road, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who lies with his father's wife because he has uncovered his father's bed, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who lies with any kind of animal, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who lies with his mother-in-law, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who attacks his neighbor secretly, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed is the one who does not confirm all the words of this law, and all the people shall say, Amen. Now in place of those curses, I want to read God's blessings upon you as a congregation, and I want you to receive these in faith. Deuteronomy 28 begins by saying, blessed shall you be in the city, 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 basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. And may all of the other blessings written in that chapter rest upon you, and all God's people said, Amen. Now the book ends with covenant succession. In chapter 31, verses 1 through 8, God declares Himself to be the God of succeeding generations. Praise God. It is such an encouragement that we don't have to reinvent the wheel every generation. In chapter 31, 9 through 13, He again reiterates the importance of Christian education, of passing the law on to succeeding generations. With government education being the norm for Christians today, it is no wonder that the vast majority of Christian youth are leaving the faith. Don't allow your children to be taught and discipled by unbelievers. Scripture says a pupil who is fully taught will be like his teacher. It deals with covenant succession, it really does. In chapter 31, 24 through 32, verse 47, Moses composes a song put to music to make sure the themes of Deuteronomy are impressed upon God's people. Good, solid music can be an outstanding way of passing on covenant succession. And if you want to break covenant succession, hey, let your kids listen to lots and lots and lots of pagan music. It will get down into their hearts. That's what that music is designed to do. Then Moses blesses the people's future in chapter 32, verse 48, through 33, verse 29. And I'll end there. And even though I still feel I've not done justice to this book as long as this sermon is, I hope I've given enough so that you have at least a vision of why this is such a critically needed book in our generation. It really is. May God impress this covenant of love upon the church of the 21st century. Amen. Father, we thank You for Your Word, and we want to understand it and to value it. We want to learn to love it. even as David loved it, and as Jesus loved it, and as the Gospel of Matthew loved it. And we desire, Father, that our lives would be able to quote Deuteronomy just like the New Testament quoted it over and over again. Help us, Father, to make this book applicable. It was written for a different generation, but Father, we know that it is applicable for all generations. And so we once again pray for Your blessing to rest upon this Your people as they seek to do so. In Jesus' name, Amen.