"The Curses of Disobedience" Deuteronomy 28:15-35 Part 1 Destructive Nature of Disobedience

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15 “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. 16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. 17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 19 Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.

20 “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. 21 The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought[a] and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. 23 And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. 24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.

25 “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. 27 The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, 29 and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways.[b] And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you. 30 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it. Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, but there shall be no one to help you. 32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. 33 A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, 34 so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see. 35 The Lord will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.

Text Explained

Curses Summed Up

15 “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all His commandments and His statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. 16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. 17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 19 Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. This is in direct contrast to verses 1-6. If they obey, they will be blessed in the city, field, basket, kneading bowl, womb, ground, herds, and flocks. So God is clearly communicating that while obedience will bring blessings, disobedience will bring the exact opposite. In fact, just as obedience will cause the blessings of God to pursue and overtake the people, in the same way, disobedience will cause the curses of God to pursue and overtake the people. Neither the blessing nor the curse could be escaped. They will always be pursued by one or the other, and it all would depend on if they kept their covenant with God. So our text opens by contrasting the positive blessings of God with the negative curses from God. Side Note: This may seem like God is being some sort of Cosmic Abuser, but we need to remember that these are the just punishments for disobeying the Law. Illustration: If I excessively speed, the curse of the Law will be anything from a speeding ticket to jail time. If I commit murder, the curse of the Law will be jail time and in some states the curse of the Law will result in my death. Now for the next 48 verses, the curses of disobedience to their covenant are unpacked and made clear so that there is no excuse.

Curses by Disease and Drought (20-24)

20 “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken Me. 21 The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until He has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. 23 And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. 24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed. As we look at verse 20-24 we see that confusion and rebuke would mark everything the Israelites would attempt to do. If they turned their backs on God, they would experience disease and drought. Instead of the rains coming in their appropriate times, the sky would give no rain and instead we are given the word picture that the rain would be like powder. Dust in the wind. And in the same way the blessings of God would pursue the people, so too would the curses. The curses would pursue them until the judgement was finished. We will see this fulfillment in the Exile of the people from the Promised Land.

Curses by Defeat & Deportation (25-35)

25 “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. In these two verses we see that instead of the consistent victories, God’s disobedient People would receive defeat after defeat. Just as verse 7 promises that Israel’s enemies would flee seven ways if God’s people were obedient, so too would God’s people flee seven ways if they were disobedient. Instead of being a blessing to the nations, Israel would be a thing of horror and their losses would feed the birds. The picture is of an army so defeated that they cannot bury their own dead but must leave them for the birds and the wild animals to eat.

27 The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, 29 and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you. This continues to paint the grim picture that the previous verses have already begun. If Israel turns away, they would suffer the same boils that they had watched God afflict upon the Egyptians forty years prior. There would be physical and mental sufferings and what is even more terrifying is the end of verse 29. Remember Psalm 121:1–2 “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” You see, God is the great Helper, the One who can save. Yet here we read that if God’s people turn away from God there will be no one to help them. God would turn a blind eye to the sinful foolishness of the disobedient and idolatrous Israelites. What a terifying picture we are seeing of the price of sin at both the individual and national level. Yet this picture continues to be painted.

30 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it. Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, but Again we read there shall be no one to help you. 32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. 33 A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, 34 so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see. 35 The Lord will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. The nations sufferings would be more than simply physical pain and death, it would be great emotional turmoil. Verse 30-32 is written from the perspective of someone who is powerless yet forced to watch as everything vanishes before them. So while it would be great physical pain for the victims, verse 30-32 adds the emotional pain as they are forced to watch all they have be stolen, killed, and destroyed. And we read that this is what happened to Zedekiah, the last King of Judah. His sons were executed before him and then his eyes were put out. So blind and helpless he was carried away into Babylonian captivity. And it is not because God is evil, but (vs20) on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken Me. So we pause the painting of the destructive nature of sin.

Text Applied

1) The Cost of Sin. For the Israelites, they had full knowledge of what God required of them and they had full knowledge of the tremendous blessings that God, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe promised to give to them if they would only do what they KNEW to be right. And they also had full understanding of the consequences that their sin would bring upon them if they chose to do what they KNEW to be wrong. I have been considering, why did God give so much more detail here on the consequences of sin then He gave about the consequences of righteousness. And I believe it is because God wanted the Israelites to see the absolute destructive affects that sin would have upon them. He is forcing the Israelites to seriously look at the Destructive nature of sin and that is so important for us today as believers. John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy...” This is the end of ALL sin. This is why Moses Hebrews 11:25 “choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.” Folks, sin is often sweet and exciting and it feels good in the moment, yet it leads to death and destruction. Proverbs 5:3–6 warns us “For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it.” And this is true of more than only sexual sin. The cost of sin is nothing less than physical pain, emotional pain, destruction of relationships and of life. There is another 30 verses in this chapter detailing the ruinous power that turning away from God would bring to the People of God. Do we see the cost of sin is so much greater than anything we can tally. Even sins done in secret that only you and God know about affect us and in turn affect those around us. And just like the Israelites, we bring the consequences of sin upon ourselves. James 1:14–15 “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

2) The Lord is the Judge here on Earth. When we look into the pages of scripture, what we so often find is that, while God is ultimately behind the consequences, His primary mode of judgment here on earht is to let you have your way and all the consequences that go with it. Illustration: In the Disney movie Aladdin, Aladdin tricks the evil Jaffar to wish to be the most powerful genie in the world. Yet what Jaffar didn’t consider was that by becoming a genie, he would now be chained to the magic lamp and thus all his cosmic power would be worthless. You see God Judges and most of the earthly judgment we receive is God saying, “Fine, you want that sin so bad, take it and you can have all the consequences that come with it. We read this in Romans 1. Romans 1:18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Romans 1:28–31 “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” You see this is how God most often handles the disobedience of people here on earth. Yet there is coming a day when the eternal judgment shall occur.

3) The Lord is the Judge in Eternity. We are all sinners and scripture is clear Romans 3:10 “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;” To quote Johnathan Edwards “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.” Dear one, if you have never repented/trusted in Christ to pay your eternal debt of sin, then you are that sinner hanging over the fires of eternity. Yet God who is full of love and mercy offers you salvation. Acts 16:31 “And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”