Lesson 61 - Ceremony of Contractual Renewal - Part 2 (Blessings)

Deuteronomy Lesson 61

Ceremony of Contractual Renewal - Part 2 (Blessings)

Deuteronomy 28:1–14
Fellowship Chapel
01 November 2011
Charles Clough
© Charles A. Clough 2011
www.BibleFrameworkApplied.org

Deuteronomy 28—we finished 27 last week so we’re moving on much faster than we were before. Let’s begin with a word of prayer.

I want to just comment again. If you’ll look at your outline, this is the third exposition. So you’ll see it starts in 27:1—goes to 29:1. This is the inauguration of the covenant. This is the second generation. They’re going into the land. Here we have the procedures we studied in chapter 27, the contract renewal. That chapter 27 is important and I list the importance there.

1. It represents the signing onto the covenant at Shechem. Remember where we’re looking. This is Shechem right up here. This is Ebal to the north, Gerizim to the south. Mt. Gerizim is going to be the one being addressed tonight, 14 verses in chapter 28. Remember that the nation is over in here. They’re going to conquer this whole area; and Moses says. “Once you’re in the land then you need to renew the covenant.” We go through that. Joshua 8 is the place where that actually happens.
2. Then we said point #2, the protocol. Remember in chapter 27 we said they had to have a whitewashed tablet very prominently displayed. Moses said – it must have been a big tablet with a lot of whitewash on it or multiple tablets because remember he said.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 27:3 “You shall write on them all the words of this law…” That’s a big order. So point #2, the protocol shows the importance of every word in the contract. We make fun of that today with our credit card contracts and other contracts. We always use the term “read the fine print.” It’s because usually some important stuff is in the fine print. Here the point is the whitewashed tablets were for all to read and understand the fine print, which means that here is another example in the Bible of universal education.

We can’t emphasize enough - universal education did not originate with pagan culture. Universal education was introduced in history by Christians. The reason it was introduced is because every person is made in God’s image and equal before God. That’s the basis of universal education. Don’t tell that to the ACLU however.

3. The Levitical administration of the cursings and malediction (which basically means to hell with me if I violate this law), by each person in key areas. Remember we said they were all private sins that were repeated in chapter 27. By private sins we mean they were unenforceable by civil authority. Now that’s important. If these are sins that are private and they’re unenforceable by civil authority, what does that imply about the thrust of chapter 27? What it’s saying is that in order for that nation to function in history, people had to function in the heart first. You could have all the government and all the regulations and all the rules you want – it’s not going to work. That’s the point of chapter 27. Chapter 27 is pointing to the fact that there are areas where the government can’t – by definition can’t enforce it. So if this is unenforceable by the state; it must mean that it’s a law addressed to the heart. Chapter 27 is one of the clearest Old Testament passages on why the law cannot save because it reveals sin that lurks in the depths of the heart. So that’s why Paul uses it in Galatians 3. We want to remember Deuteronomy 27 whenever you read Galatians because the idea of Galatians comes out of Deuteronomy 27. By going back to Deuteronomy 27 you understand so Galatians doesn’t become some abstract thing about the law and grace. By going back to 27 you can actually see what Paul was thinking about when he wrote Galatians 3 - another example of the value of reading the Old Testament.
4. The other point you’ll see is the law is that part of revelation that reveals God’s holy demands upon us. If we stopped with that period at the end of that sentence, it would be depressing because when we stop there God’s holy demands upon us - all we get is we’re in constant violation of His holy commands. That’s a very depressive state. So we add another sentence. We need further revelation beyond the law. What is the further revelation we need beyond the law? That is revelation of God’s gracious love and provisions. That’s what’s meant in Galatians when it says that the law is a tutor to bring us to Christ. If you stop with the law, it’s just depressing; but if you go beyond that then we have something that’s worthwhile.

This is why those of you who have been exposed to Great Comfort’s method of evangelism; one of the powerful points that I think he has reminded us all about is that you have to address the conscience. Just addressing intellect for the sake of chasing an idea doesn’t do it. The brain is wired somehow to the conscience. It’s the conscience according to Romans 1; the depth of the conscience, that every one of us has some sort of whatever it is that the Bible calls conscience, some sort of a template where we really do know that God is there. We really do know that we’re ultimately responsible to Him. But as we get sophisticated, we play all these little games to try to pretend we don’t believe God or we don’t really believe He is the way the Bible says He is because all those efforts are really attempts to assuage a guilty conscience. So chapter 27 is crucial.

So point 4 the nation could not prosper without heart allegiance to Yahweh. That’s the bottom line.

That’s why…don’t let somebody tell you that the Old Testament is all legalism. It isn’t legalism. It gets to deal with the heart. Legalism is when the law is being used in a superficial fashion like the Pharisees were using it. The Old Testament is not legalistic.

Now we come to chapter 28. If you skim those 14 verses, chapter 28, very quickly you’ll see:

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:3 “Blessed you shall be in the city

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:4 “Blessed.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:5 “Blessed.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:6 “Blessed.

Verse 7, the Lord is going to take care of your enemies. It all goes down to verse 14. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:14 “So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them.”

So that’s the passage that we want to zero in on. Now it’s talking about these blessings. We want to avoid misreading this because when we Christians hear the word blessing, we tend to think in terms of spiritual blessings. We tend to think this because the New Testament talks about spiritual blessings, Ephesians 1 etc. These blessings aren’t spiritual blessings; these blessings are social justice, social economic blessings. This is a nation, not an individual. So these blessings are a kind of a different than the kinds we are used to seeing in the New Testament.

That being the case now we have to back up one further step and say, “Wait a minute. If they are a different kind of blessing and they deal with foreign policy, domestic policy, economics, military policy - what does this section of Scripture tell us about history?”

Now we’re going to be introduced right at this point to a major revelation from this whole nine century period from 1440 and Moses all the way down to 586 - this chunk of time that is encaptured by most of the Old Testament. We want to zoom out and see what this period of history is telling us because these 14 verses are giving a prediction, a rational prediction of the possible outcome in history.

1. We’re dealing with: are the claims of the Bible true? This is a claim being made in this chapter. It’s economic, military, domestic, productivity claims – even birthrate claims are made here. Are the claims in the Bible true? Is there a God who does publicly in history what He says He will do? A vital question! This text gets right in the middle of this question. Revelation is historical. It’s not just feelings or story themes. This is actual hard real history that encompasses all of a society and all of the nation with all the cause-effect stuff going on. So we’re dealing with a contract.
2. A contract states specific stipulations that are to be evaluated. Remember these are contractual stipulations. “I will do this if you do that.” That’s a contract. So the contact then has to be monitored, and it has to be evaluated. It has to be evaluated for compliance or violations. That sets you up for the rest of the Old Testament. That is what Isaiah is talking about; Jeremiah is talking about; Hosea is talking about; Micah is talking about and all the prophets. All those prophets that are going to come now after Moses are dealing with the contractual stipulations. Did Israel keep its contractual stipulations or not? Did Yahweh, did God Jehovah, keep the instructions or keep the stipulations - yes or no? That’s the argument. This sets up the whole rest of the Old Testament. This is how you read the Old Testament properly. You’re reading the reports of ongoing history.
3. Old Testament follow-on prophets received God’s reports of compliance or violation and announced the enforcement sanctions. So these are the consequences of choices. These are sanctions and they’re positive sanctions or they’re negative sanctions. Deuteronomy 28 reveals the sanctions so that the prophetic literature - I mention all of this because we’re getting to the end of Deuteronomy and hopefully this will help you understand the rest of the Old Testament - how to read the rest of the Old Testament. So I want to make a point here. Deuteronomy reveals the sanctions so the prophetic literature while often poetic and literary form must be interpreted within the meaning of this chapter. For example, if the prophets speak of climate changes; they aren’t referring to political climate. They’re referring to the physical climate.

We have a whole group of evangelicals writing now that want us to go back and “reread the Old Testament.” What they are taking advantage of is a lot of the Old Testament prophets are written in poetic form. So poetic form by definition, all poetry uses metaphors. So they take advantage of the poetic literary structure; and then they begin to say, “Well you know, all that stuff Isaiah is talking about stars and the sun and the rain and so forth. That’s not real rain. That’s not real stars. Those are just metaphors.” Then they start that little method of interpretation. Then they slide over to the book of Revelation and the whole book of Revelation becomes one big metaphor. So when you hear people doing that, just think Deuteronomy 28. In Deuteronomy 28 the ground language is set. Here is where we understand what those words mean. Yes they can be poetic. We will see how Moses speaks poetically as a model in Deuteronomy 32. So we’ve got a hermeneutical control in this book. But he means literally things.

4. This 9-century period in human history, this period of the Israelite theocracy was a laboratory demonstration to the world that existence has rationality. It refuted the pagan notion that existence is ultimately unknowable.

So let’s stop right there. This is a very important point people. Don’t trivialize it. Until Israel did all this and experienced all of this in its history, there is no concept of rationality outside of Israel. There are expressions of despair. If you read Egyptian poetry, it’s very despairing. It just hopes that things will hold together. Some of the Ugaritic literature—it’s just endless seasons that go round and round. Solomon in Ecclesiastes comments on that. So outside of Israel you don’t see this.

The reason I make this point is because we in the West because we’ve inherited our rationality, our belief in rationality; we’re not thankful for it. We take it for granted. The rest of the world has not taken this for granted.

Look at the structure of Hinduism and you can see Hinduism as CS Lewis said is the finest and greatest attempt on a pagan basis to deal with reality. And what is the conclusion? Reality is an allusion. Hinduism - the people who did all that work in Hinduism did understand what they were doing. They said, “What are we going to do? We don’t have any revelation.”

Well, they did. They probably suppressed it. Suppressing it now, this is what you get. You get a bleak universe that is meaningless. I don’t know how many times I have confronted skeptics about this thing. It’s like they go through life fat, dump and happy; and they don’t realize there is no basis for what they’re hoping in. There is no hope outside. So that’s the first thing that Israel in that nine-century period demonstrate rationality, not in an abstract sense not like Plato with idealism; but they are demonstrating real history that if I’m a farmer or I’m a businessman I can think about the future because I know what the future can be like. So that’s rationality.

Now if you continue in point #4 after I say it refuted the pagan notion that existence is ultimately unknowable but this rationality isn’t that of an impersonal machine. That’s where the West in its suppression of revelation hooked onto the idea of rationality and then dropped God off of it. So that’s how you get Isaac Newton. He was a Christian but his disciples massacred Newton’s faith. So we have this machine like idea that all we have to do is pump an equation out and we’re going to solve a problem. You’ll quickly see and where this shows up is economic theory. What’s showing up here is continue this rationality is not that of an impersonal machine. It is personal ethically based contract of specific consequences for defined behavior.

I packed that sentence with a lot of words. The idea is that yes there is predictability; but the predictability is a result of the God who rules all over. The exact prediction of the future is built off of one’s response to that God. That’s the environment that the Jew lived in. That’s the story of those 9 centuries. It was ethical performance that determined the outcome and the outcome was predictable based on one’s response to God.

In a small microcosm of this, this is the struggle every parent has with young children. If the struggle isn’t persisted in, children grow up insecure in spite of all the whining and the fussing and all the rest of it and all the energy you expend trying to do this. What the child has to understand is they are going to experience blessing or cursing depending on what they do – fundamental lesson in life. Yet we live in a day when we always want to ameliorate the consequences of choices. We want to do it with our economics. Somebody makes a stupid decision.

“Why don’t we go ahead and keep on trying?”

Yes we want to ameliorate some of it because we are gracious. But if you ameliorate and moderate too much of the consequences, guess what doesn’t happen. We don’t learn responsibility. Responsibility as we’ve all known in our personal lives – the best lessons we’ve ever learned have always been our bad decisions and screwing up and having to sit there and experience the results. Once you go through that cycle - “Oh gee, I learned that lesson well. Maybe I’ll make another stupid thing; but I’m not going to do that again.” So that’s how we learn – through the consequences. All this business of coddling kids and keeping them from consequences is ridiculous because you’re really causing them to suffer because now they’re not learning what they’re supposed to be learning. So now they’re going to hit their head on the wall 500 more times because it wasn’t pointed out the first or second time. This is practical stuff here.

It’s an ethically based contract. I have suggested again and again that the result of this experience in those 9 centuries was that we had a learning situation right here where these religions all sprung up within a hundred years of the exile. Nobody has an explanation for this. Here you have no religions form for a millennium of time. A thousand years go by; and there’s no change. Then all of a sudden when the Jews are kicked out of the land all over the world we have this happen. So what’s going on here? We have something going on in Persia with Zoroaster. There are his dates, 600 to 583. Why did that start in Persia at that particular time? Then we have in India – we have Brahma, Jainism We have the time of the Buddha – Buddhism. What’s going on there? For thousands of years nothing happened in India. Then all of a sudden the Jews get kicked out of the land and boom, boom we have two revolutionary movements that happen. Then we have – there are three of them. So there 3 things going on in India. That’s crucial. India was the center of well-thought-out paganism.

Then in China we have LaoTzu and Confucius. Look at the dates. These are all single people that are reforming the culture. If you look at all these reformations occurring, they all tend to be an individual taking on the priesthoods. Some of these guys Confucius and the other fellows something got a bee in their bonnet that they suddenly could do away with a thousand of years of tradition and have the confidence that they could reason things through – so confident they could break with the traditional culture of their countries.

I have suggested for several years that this is due to the Diaspora, Jewish businessmen somehow going out all over the world and talking to people. They somehow in their pagan minds got the idea that you could think things through. But they didn’t do too much with it. They kind of screwed it up.

Then we have, of course, the most startling thing that ever happened in world history – one of the most startling things. You can go to philosophy class and people never comment on what happened here. This was an explosive event that happened that affected all of Western civilization. That is the rise of Greek philosophy - the idea that man could sit down and develop rationally a coherent picture of reality. That is new. That did not happen until the Greeks started all this stuff. Again as Henry Frankfurt at the University of Chicago points out, the Greek philosophers proceeded with a preposterous boldness (Look at his words.) on an entirely unproven assumption.

Here it is: “They held that the universe is an intelligible whole.”

Where on earth did they get that? That is a brand new idea. Never before was this...

So obviously we know where Plato went. Plato took a long trip back down to Alexandria. Guess who was in Alexandria translating the Bible from the Hebrew into the Greek. It was the Jews. So I suspect there’s a Jewish connection here.

“In other words they presumed that a single order underlies the chaos of our perceptions and furthermore we are able to comprehend the order. They attempted to reach…”

Now here is where the autonomous spirit takes up. They get the idea that they can think; but now it’s arrogant man who is going to do the thinking independently of any external source.

“They attempted to reach a vantage point where the phenomenon would reveal their hidden coherence. It was the unshakeable conviction of the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, and the early Iliadics that such a vantage point existed… “

And look at this.

“They searched for the road leading to it, not in the manner of scientists but in that of conquistadors.”

There is the rise of philosophy. So it’s an amazing, I think, effect that a chapter like chapter 28 has because this chapter deals with rational predictability.

5. Finally, point 5. If you read the contemporary treaties and political treaties that were being made at this time in history, they too would have sanctions. But it’s interesting that in the pagan treaties many of them put the cursings before the blessings. Here we have the blessings before the cursings.

Hold the place in Deuteronomy 28 and let’s go back to that famous passage of Genesis 12:3, way back to the Abrahamic Covenant. We want to be reminded of pronouns. Pronouns are either singular or plural. When you read the text and you see a pronoun, you want to check to see whether you are reading a plural pronoun or you’re reading a singular pronoun.

Now look at Genesis 12:3 ^NKJ Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; …” See the asymmetry in the sentence? Do you see there are plurals in the first clause but singleness in the second? I suggest to you what that implies is God’s heart is not to go around cursing everybody. He would love to bless people. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world in spite of the fact that people will wind up in the Lake of Fire who have rejected that. God isn’t a meanie. He doesn’t get a thrill out of judging people. He’d much rather bless people than He would curse people. I find that comforting because this shows a little of the heart of God.

Now we come back to Deuteronomy 28. While it is true that the blessings are shorter in the text than the cursings, at least the blessings come first. Now we want to go to blessing itself. So let’s look at the first 6 verses. On your outline you’ll see that we have the contingency and the extent of the blessings. There are two things that we’re getting in these six verses. They are indeed contingent – they are contingent on what Israel is going to do in its relationship with God; but it’s also of widespread extent. The blessings aren’t just little religious blessings in the heart. The blessings encompass the whole social existence of this nation.

So let’s look at verses one to six.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:1 “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. ² And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the LORD your God: ³ Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. ⁴ 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. ⁵ Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. ⁶ Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.”

Let’s go through those verses. The first one is “diligently obey.” ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:1 “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey …”

That’s the Hebrew construction, the infinitive absolute construction that makes this contingency strong. It emphasizes the contingent nature of this. That’s going to happen or this prediction isn’t going to happen. The prediction is contingent upon that choice – the choice to diligently obey the voice of your God.

Then notice it says: “all His commandments which I command you today”. Once again you have the emphasis there on the inspiration of Scripture because Moses is saying that the words that he is teaching are the very words of God. “

“that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.” Now we’re going to expand that in a little bit. That phraseology, I will set you high above the nations, means that we’re talking not about individual blessings; we are talking about national blessings. We are talking about blessings that are so significant that they determine the nation’s power relative to all other nations.

As you think about this, can you imagine why the founders of this country who were Christians made such a point about the moral requirements? Quite a few of them apparently followed sort of, almost a replacement theology that saw America as the New Israel. That’s why they put so much importance on the fact that this nation could be blessed based on the analogy. There is some legitimacy to that, not that the United States is not under the Mosaic Law because it’s not part of the contract. But in Acts 17 Paul clearly does say that the God has determined the times, before preappointing the bounds of the habitations of nations based on their spiritual state. So history does have this spiritual contingency to it.

Let’s go on and look at the uniqueness of this. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:2 “And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you …”

Translators are struggling with something there. I don’t know what you have in your translation but mine has “they will overtake you.” It’s an idiom in the Hebrew. What it’s trying to tell us is superabundant. It means very, very abundantly. It means something else. Not only does it mean very, very abundant but it means that it is going to be watched. It is observable blessings. That’s what separates these blessing from spiritual blessings that may or may not be visible. These are visible blessings.

Now why do you think the emphasis in these verses from 3 onto 6 are going to be blessings all over the place. It’s doing what? Let’s think about this. Why is it important that these blessings be publicly visible to the surrounding nations? Because it glorifies God. So these are intended to be sort of a pre-evangelism. This is a drama that’s being enacted in history.

Now to show how screwed up your education has been and mine, what history class, what social studies class have you ever been in that has dealt with this 9-century period? That’s what I figured. No one has. If the Bible is true and this 9-century period in human history is this dramatic that of all of human history you have got a case of a laboratory for 900 years where God ruled that and you can see Him working. Why isn’t that central to a history course? I’ll tell you why. Because the history course must filter any attempt of God’s influence. It is part of Romans 1 suppression. You see this is why we should not be impressed with the education that we get. Yes, it’s useful in certain areas – the mechanical things – how to add, subtract, how to write, how to read, how to discuss. Those are technical things. As far as any real wise understanding, we have not received a proper education because we haven’t studied these things. We’ve studied history totally out of its context.

Let’s look now at the details. It says in verse 3: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:3 “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.” Let’s think about the implication of this. This is saying the economy is not biased toward the urbanites or biased toward the people who live in the country. Both urban and rural areas are prospering. So there’s a uniformity of the blessing. It’s not skewed in favor of one or the other as our economies often are.

Then it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:4 “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds …”

Let’s stop with those 3 phrases. What kind of blessing is he talking about - the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, the increase of your herds? The fruit of the body are children. It’s talking about growth rates. Population growth rate is considered a blessing – not interfering with the carbon footprint of the atmosphere. Right here we’re attacking the whole ecology movement. If you pipe up in an environmental class that you’re for population growth; you’ll probably get excommunicated from the course because it’s anathema. This is heresy. Children are a cursing to the environmentalist; the human race is a cancer on nature.

“Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground …” There is the farming and the culturalizing of the physical environment contrary to the preservation idea that the wilderness is supposed to be left intact without man touching it. This is saying that man is to touch it – not rape it, not destroy it, not poison it; but to bring it to fruitfulness. “… the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.” Now all 3 animals drove the economy. That’s farm produce - wealth.

Now let’s look at the 3 categories again and think – what are the causes involved? Let’s think this way. Pretend for a while that we’re angels; and we’re in charge of the natural processes. How many natural processes is God commanding us to do for Israel? The first one deals with man. So now we somehow are working with human bodies. We’re talking about health. We’re talking about pregnancy. We’re talking about conception. We’re talking about birth of children that are free of birth defects. We’re talking about that area that involves male and female bodies - health. Somehow the blessing manipulates or does something to the human bodies. We often think of health as what we do with our bodies; that’s true. But here you have a super natural affect on human health.

Then you go to the next phrase, the produce of your ground. Now we’re talking about cause-effect in what realm? The botanical realm, plants. So now we’ve moved from the human body of man to the ground to the physical nature and the plant life in the botanical sphere. Somehow whether God is working with the photosynthetic process, whether He is working with the physical fertilizer and minerals in the ground, whether He’s working with the light on the leaves, whether He’s working with the particular varieties; He’s working with the ground and this is blessing in the area of the botanical realm.

Then finally blessing of your cattle, of your flocks and herds. That’s the zoological realm. So now do you see now why I’m driving at this? Because when you read this in the prophets in Jeremiah, these aren’t metaphors. These are physical causes that are happening all over the place in human bodies, in the plants, in the ground and in the animals – all over. This is all encompassing.

Then it says in 5—it’s kind of repeating: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:5 “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.” The blessings there are food production. He’s talking about starvation. There is going to be no famine. There’s going to be the basics of life in existence – food. Then:

⁶ “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.” There he is talking about the idea of indoor and outdoor activity. So the implication as I’ve put it in that square on your handout; the implications are this. The entire biosphere cause-effect processes are modified according to national response to Yahweh, which implies that the universe’s physics and chemistry are not impersonal processes. That directly challenges everything you learn in science. In science we are taught that the biological processes are absolutely predictable. You got initial condition; you can predict the future. They’re not at all a result of the ethical environment. That’s where we differ. Sorry! The Bible doesn’t teach that kind of rationality. The Bible conditions the responses that are going on to the ethical and spiritual environment and choices made. See this is a little different idea.

Now we don’t have time tonight but I’ve listed Deuteronomy 32:1 (which we will exegete), Psalm 89, Hebrews 2, Galatians 3, and Acts 7. Why have I put those verses in there? Because those verses tell us are sneak previews of angelic intermediaries between God and our creation. Those are specific verses showing that angelic beings are involved in this manipulation if that’s what you want to call it.

Now we come to verses 7 to 14, enumeration of the blessings. When we get here what we have is the same structure. You’ll notice the chiastic structure that I have listed there. Here remember back in chapters 6 and 7, here is the old chiasm. We’re going to see it again. When you have a chiasm, you’ve got a sandwich structure. The author has a piece of bread here and a piece of bread here. Then inside the bread the filling of the sandwich is his central target. So you saw this in chapter 6:1-9, 20-25 where the commands and procedures and protocols are. Remember 6:6-25. “When your son asks you at Passover, what about this?” Here Mom and Dad. Here’s what you’re going to tell them – boom, boom, boom.” In verses 1 to 9, how is the Word of God going to get into the heart of your child? It’s going to get into the heart of your child because you’re going to analyze life for them 24-7 from the standpoint of the Word of God.

So those are the how-tos. But the how-tos could become legalistic if you don’t keep in mind the relationship with God, a personal relationship with God. So that’s why in 10 through 19 Moses spent the heart relation to Yahweh. That’s the filling in the sandwich. Then we saw the same thing in chapter 7 with the holy war.

Now in this one if you’ll look at this one 28:7, and you’ll see it. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:7 “ The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; …” You come down to verse 12 and you look at the second part of verse 12.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:12 “…You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. [13] “And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail;” In both of those cases we’re talking about foreign relations - the blessing of foreign relations, Israel’s relationship with surrounding countries.

Now you come toward the inside of the sandwich and look at verse 8 and what it’s saying there. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:8 “The LORD will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand …” Then you look at verse11and 12a. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:11 “And the LORD will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. [12] The LORD will open to you His good treasure, …” That’s talking about domestic and largely the domestic economy of the state of Israel.

Then finally in the middle, in the very center of this verses 9 through 10… ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:9 “The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways. [10] Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you.” He’s talking about their personal relationship with God. So then what we’ll do is we’ll look at the outer layers of the sandwich now. So what we’re going to do is going to look at verse 7; then we’re going to skip down to verse 12b and 13 because those fit together. This is one layer. These are the foreign relations blessings.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:7 “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.” The enemies that rise up against Israel is talking about attacks, attacks upon the nation. This is not holy war here. This is Israel minding its own business; and it’s attacked. So this is an aggressive nation outside of Israel trying to attack Israel. What it says is they will defeat them and if you’ll note in your handout I make a point about the Hebrew structure there. It’s a niphel participle which means it’s characteristic that they’ll always be defeated. They will always be defeated! “Any nation that rises up against you is going to be defeated.” It is an axiom of life as long as you are being blessed. This clearly is talking about military engagements.

To add emphasis: “they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.” What it’s saying is they’ll have a military plan of attack that’s one way. That’s their focus. They charge in and then the defeat is so overwhelming they peter out and go in every direction. Seven ways means a complete rout.

Then we come down to verse 12b and 13. Now it’s still international relations; but it’s talking about economic relations. You can’t get away from economics. It’s in the Bible over and over and over. So here it is. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:12 …You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. [13] And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today.” So now we’re talking about economic structures. So in your notes I have put a quote from Professor Gary North, economist. If you’ll follow this quote – it’s very important.

You see this is another thing missing from your school, another thing missing from the curriculum. If you take a course in economics you read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and you read Karl Marx Das Capital and so forth. People yak about the economic theories and so forth.

Follow Dr. North here.

“Adam Smith understood this.”

In context Dr. North is talking about economic blessings or cursings are ethically related.

“Adam Smith understood this. His disciples rarely have. Before he wrote the famous book that everybody reads inquiring the nature and causes of the wealth of nations in 1776.”

By the way notice the date.

“He wrote before that a book nobody reads which is called the Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

Note the date, 1759.

“His moderate deism was a dissipated version of the covenantal Presbyterianism of the Scottish forbearers. His orderly world of economic causation rested on moral cause and effect in history.”

So when you hear someone griping at capitalism and it’s not related ethically and they quote Adam Smith – sorry you didn’t read his first book.

“The seeming autonomy of his economic theory of morality and of his morality from theology is an allusion.”

In the second book he didn’t emphasize that because he explained it in his first book that nobody reads.

“Smith’s epistemology moved in the direction of autonomy no doubt but his economic theory was not an exercise in value-free methodology. He recognized that an economy is grounded in moral causation.”

Here he’s quoting; this is what Adam Smith said.

 “Society may subsist though not in the most comfortable state without beneficence.”

That means effective morals.

“But the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it. Vice is always capricious. Virtue only is regular and orderly.”

Now how people can read Adam Smith and say that morals and ethics never affect the free market is screwed up. They haven’t read or understood him. That goes for some of the libertarians that follow Ayn Rand by the way. These are Christian men who are exposed to the Scriptures. So here we have in 12b and 13 Israel is the net lender. It’s the economics.

And what’s going to happen in verse 13 (I will make you the head and not the tail), this is why on your notes in your handout I make the point here that the economics of Israel’s eschatology are dependent on the spiritual quality of its relationship with Yahweh. In other words, their destiny as a nation (their future, their eschatology) is contingent on their moral choices and their eschatology is involved with their economics. We’re talking about physical people that eat, people that earn money, people that till the ground, people that do things that have this economy.

Then I also point out what we’ve dealt with before.

Due to trusting the new vest, they did what He told them to do.

You’ll see where I have it in the notes, integrity of character. It always follows from a relationship with God. Integrity of character has economic implications.

Less likelihood of defaults on loans which reduces interest rates, less manipulation of coinage which also reduces interest rates because you don’t have to compensate for inflation, optimism about the future that stimulates saving, and finally borrowing that is done is for capitalizing to get future production rather than borrowing for present consumption.

Now let me explain that last sentence. The Bible is not against business borrowing. The usury thing in the Old Testament is talking about having to prevent people that are broken economically. These are charitable loans. Zero interest is there to protect them from digging a hole and getting worse in debt. If a person can’t pay a bill, there’s no sense in putting a loan on his back. He’s got to pay 10 percent; he can’t even pay the principle let alone the 10%. That’s why there is zero interest charged on charitable loans.

The idea of Scripture is you can borrow if it’s for legitimate reasons. Of course, businessmen borrow all the time. It’s perfectly legitimate. You’re borrowing however not to cover present expenses; you’re borrowing to invest in your business so you can then produce and get out of debt. So temporary indebtedness for business capitalization is fine. Where borrowing gets out of hand is where you’re having to borrow to make today’s payments. You’re not investing in a business or making it bigger or stronger. What you’re doing is dissipating your stuff as fast as you borrow it.

That gets back once again to the chart that we’ve seen again and again – God’s design. We’re back down to integrity of communication, labor and property. It is that labor and property that is the source of these blessings. The labor and the property however are not sufficient. That’s why I point out – problem. The very blessing can be a temptation. Remember Deuteronomy 8? ^NKJ Deuteronomy 8:3 “…that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone…” And what God is warning them is then, “After you’ve obeyed Me and I start blessing you, you begin to relax.” Then you begin to say, “Oh well! The blessing is automatic, no problem,” forgetting that it was obedience to the Lord that brought about that blessing. So we get calloused and start forgetting the source of the blessing.

God says when that happens, “go back to your 40 years out in the wilderness”. Now what did you see when you were out in the wilderness? You had to survive every 24 hours. Who supplied the water and food? “Well, I guess Yahweh did.” That’s right. So what He did in that wilderness wanderings, He took away the economic cause-effects that we take for granted. So what did that do? That unmasked His provisions so you could see them. The problem is that most of us, and all of us now, don’t see it graphically like they did in Israel. His grace and His supplying us are masked by the fact that it’s mediated to us through our labor. But that’s where the temptation—and the temptation must have been there for the Jewish businessman because what did the commandment control? Remember the commandment? It said how many days will you work? Only 6. You don’t work every day.

The pagans used to laugh at the Jews. “Ah, they’re just lazy.” No, that was an act of faith to not work 7 days because their competitors in the pagan world were working 7 days. So for them to only work 6 days meant that in 6 days they had to produce what their pagan competition was doing in 7 days. It took an act of faith to do that. God required it of them so they would relax and understand that work is necessary; but work is not sufficient - two words, necessary but not sufficient.

Now we come to verse 8 and 11 and 12a. Now we’re coming to the inside of the sandwich. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:8 “The LORD will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you.” Now it’s talking about storehouses. That’s where the agriculture production was stored. “… all to which you set your hand …”

That could be the guy in the urban city, the craftsman. That could be small-scale businesses.

Then in verses 11 and 12a, he repeats the blessing that earlier he said. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:11 “And the LORD will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock …” All that was economically productive. Children were economically productive because children carried on the inheritance of the family.

A society that can’t reproduce like northern Europe, eastern United States and west coast United States where the birthrate is less than 2.1 are dying cultures. Japan is a dying culture—not going to be around 50 more years. It’s totally dysfunctional because they’re not having babies. You can’t have a society without children. Children are the next generation. So growth rates below 2.1 are death, death rates. Here what God is saying is you’re having blessing because it’s going to bless your children, your livestock and everything that goes with it. So much for that.

Now we come down to finally the inside of the sandwich. Let me look at verse 11 and 12a. Let’s go to 12a. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:12 “The LORD will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain …”

Now He’s not only dealing with human health, now we’re not only dealing with the soil and the botanical realm; now we’re not just dealing with the zoological realm; now we’re dealing with the geophysical realm and climate control. Do you see how total these blessings are? None of them can be explained unless God is controlling the whole shebang. He will make the rain. He’s talking about climate blessings. In your notes after He gives rain, that’s why I have more evidence that economic prosperity is not the result of legalistic government policies. Here the geophysics of the atmosphere or hydrologic cycle is involved. No government policy is regulating the hydrologic cycle. So it’s quite clear that this kind of a social theory of economics is grounded on something utterly foreign to anything you would learn in a business or economics class.

Finally, we end at the inside in verses 9 and 10. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:9 “The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you …” That’s talking about the relationship, the intimate relationship, between God and His nation. It’s so intimate that in verse 10, that’s the witness. So the bottom line or the center of the sandwich is God is glorified nationally and internationally by the other nations looking at this blessing that’s coming today. It’s going to be recognizable. It is public. It is observable. It is measurable. [10] “Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you.”

Now in your notes I give you two references in the Hebrew. This is the way it sounds in the Hebrew or the way it’s translated. The name of Yahweh is called (?)… That’s the way the Hebrew was. The translators have to make it fits our English language. If you look at those two verses 2 Samuel 12 and Jeremiah 32, you’ll see that when that phrase is used in the Hebrew it’s referring to personal property. In other words what God is saying, “You are close to Me. You of all the nations on the globe, you are My personal property. Because you are My personal property, you are going to be different from all else outside of Israel.” Remember we said: “Why did God bring Israel into existence?” Because Israel was going to be a counterculture to the Noahic civilization that was paganizing itself.

Then finally, the conclusion verse 14. This is the end of the blessings. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 28:14 “So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them.” Now we’ve seen this again and again. This goes back to this diagram. Again and again what happens here is that if we have a situation where we’re talking about politics or ethics, we don’t dig deep enough. What God says here notice - the one sin that is more important than all other sins is which god do you worship. You wonder, why is that the issue here?

As I point out in the notes idolatry falsifies reality. It rebels against God and destroys the society. When you see in our country people some of whom their heart’s in the right place they are just ignorant trying to get rid of every public manifestation of the Christian faith in our society; these are the destroyers of this country. They are more destructive than terrorists flying a plane into a tall building. They really, are because they’re eating the heart away from the country. When that heart is gone, God has no reason to bless. He doesn’t have any reason to bless actually, but He has blessed us in the past.

The Founding Fathers would certainly, based on Deuteronomy 28, say that the economics are ethically related – maybe not as tight as Israel; but they are. You can talk about Keynes; you can talk about Milton Friedman; you can talk about Ludwig Von Mises and all the economics people. But Deuteronomy 28 is giving you and me a view of economics that’s not being taught be any of those guys, that economic outcomes are ethically driven.

All right, that’s it for tonight. Next week we will be going on to the cursings.

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We will have some Q&A but we may have to cut it short.

Yes, question.

Oh, the exile is B.C. This is Old Testament, not New Testament. The issue was the dates of all that. It’s all B.C.

Question

Okay, the question is a crucial question. The question is the reputed wealth of Jewish people - is it real and is it related somehow to their covenant with God. We know they were ejected in 586 BC from the land. The restoration was only partial. Obviously with the rejection of Jesus as their Messiah the Old Testament law code is no more. So we would have to say that they’re not under the Mosaic Law. Customs I know a lot of Messianic Jews feel like – they have circumcision, Passover, etc. It’s more their Jewish identity.

The so-called wealth of the Jews harks back the Roman Catholic Church. It was the Roman Catholic Church that forced the Jews into banking because the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages misinterpreted the Old Testament Law and taught all over Europe that you couldn’t be a Christian and loan money. Well obviously you had businesses that needed money. You couldn’t have productivity without business loans. Somebody had to do the banking. So the irony was that the usury laws in the Middle Ages at least had a strong effect in driving Jews into banking. So they were into banking and they got involved in business and they’re good at it.

The Jewish people have two propensities. They can really be productive or can really be heretics. It’s sad to say but one of the great destructive people groups that started after Karl Marx was called the Frankfurt group. They were all atheist Marxist Jews. Hitler drove them out in 1933 and of course our wonderful Columbia University in New York City – there must have been political correctness back then in 1933. They decided they would help them out and let them sit around in some institute in New York. From there they wrote books like Eric Fromm Eros in Civilization which every hippie read in the 1960s.

So their influence has still been insidious. The people that occupy Wall Street right now are acting like the hippies of the ’60s. They don’t know what they’re talking about. They can’t understand the world; but they know something’s wrong. They are going all over the place. The difference is – I don’t know who they’re living off of but the hippies in the ’60s lived out in the communes as long as mom and daddy’s credit cards worked. Then these independent souls came back to mom and daddy because they couldn’t earn any money by themselves. That helped this group – has taken baths and cut their hair and now run the country. So this is what’s happened.

The Jewish people however when they put their minds to it are tremendously creative. If you’ve seen the number of patents and the number of Nobel Prize winners coming out of Israel alone since 1948 and you compare that with the entire Middle East since 1948; it’s off the charts. They are very inventive. When I went to Israel in 1976 I was asking about why when you fly into Tel Aviv and you look down out of the airplane window and you see what - on a map it’s called the green line which is the area between the Palestinians and the Jews. By the way the Jews were called Palestinians. The name Palestinian only recently is applied to non-Jews. You fly over that and you look down. On one side you see orchards, productive farms going on; the other side you see ground and rocks.

You think to yourself, “The climate is the same. Obviously in 500 feet the climate doesn’t change. So what’s the difference?”

I asked some of them.

They said, “Yeah, you’re looking down now but that took an entire generation of Jewish farmers to build up hummus so they could build up their soil so they could grow something.”

Now the Arabs want the land back after the Jews did all the work. So this is the difference in culture of these two peoples. The Jewish people have produced wonders. They’re hard workers. They know that a lot of those Jewish people - I think to answer your question they’ve had tough lives. Their parents have been killed. They’ve been driven out so they feel like they’ve got no other place to go. They’ve got to survive here. So I guess when you’re in that situation necessity is the mother of invention.

Question

Good point! Jewish people dominate our culture. Who was it that donated the symphony hall in Baltimore city? Meyerhoff You see that they are involved in the culture. The Jews that do that – do you know where they follow? They follow … I can’t remember the passage. I think it’s around Jeremiah 29. There’s a passage in there that says, “Seek the Shalom where you live.” Jeremiah is talking about when you go out into the gentile lands. “Don’t seek to overthrow them; but seek the Shalom of that place. They do that. They try to build up the culture where they are. Also the downside to that is that they had some insidious immoral effects on the culture in Hollywood also.

Question

Well there are people - the big thing to remember about the Jewish people is they’re not going away; and you know why. When you hear the anti-Semites who lash out – and again I recommend to you the book, Nazi Oaks. A friend of mine who I urged to publish that book because he had done the research. He wrote an essay. Mark Musser is his name.

I said, “Mark, this has got to be enlarged beyond an essay. You’ve really got to write a whole book about this.”

He’s going to write a second edition. Nazi Oaks – it’s real oak trees. The reason he calls it Nazi Oaks is because in the 1936 Olympics that was so crucial. Remember when Hitler sat there and Jessie Owens (the black man) beat his Nazi Aryan racerunners and Hitler had to choke it down. He had to give awards to the athletes. Everyone that got an Olympic medal in 1936 also got a flowerpot with an oak tree in it. People forget why that was so. You’ll never see this in history books.

That’s what I told Mark. Mark was a missionary in Eastern Europe for 8-9 years. You go into Germany and you learn this stuff. People don’t have a clue why Hitler gave every Olympic athlete an oak tree. Jessie Owens brought his oak tree back and it’s still growing in Ohio or Illinois somewhere in the front yard of his house.

The reason Hitler did that was Hitler was a green dictator. Hitler’s dream and why he in his 1941 table talk that Mark has grabbed a copy of that from Germany and has gone through it very thoroughly. The 1941 table talk of Adolph Hitler are his briefings to his inner circle of Nazi propaganda people. In there he divulges completely why he invaded Eastern Europe. It wasn’t to destroy Russia. The reason that Hitler invaded Eastern Europe was to destroy the Slavic races and erase them from the land so the Germans could expand and form parks and green places and vacation homes.

Organic gardens he planted right outside of Austerlitz. So the ecology came to the Nazi through Heidegger who everybody thinks, “Heidegger, he’s such a wonderful philosopher. He’s an existentialist.”

He’s a Nazi. He was well read in the ecology of the time. He got that idea. It started in America of course with Walden Pond and Henry Thoreau. These are romantics. Walden Pond is one of the earliest ecological documents. It’s that romanticism. Rousseau started it way back. Then these guys developed it and then it got to spreading around Europe. Then the Nazi’s picked it up and they added something. The Nazis added two things to this. They noticed that the Jews were so heavily involved in the businesses of Germany that when they would go through Hamburg and some of the German cities they would see the industry. And of course the industry was dirty and smoky and so forth.

They said, “See the Jews! The Jews are the source of the pollution in Germany. The Jews have made our cities full of filth and industry and so forth.”

Of course the Jews—that’s why Germans were employed because the factories were making products that they could sell.

But Hitler’s idea and the Nazi’s idea was that the Jews did that because of Genesis 1:26-29. It is fascinating - the Nazi’s knew Genesis.

They clearly said—Heidegger clearly said it. “We have to get rid of the Jews because of that dad gum Jewish book. The Jews and their little book were always going around interfering with nature.”

It’s remarkable that these ecological thoughts come out of Genesis.

So Hitler married that to German paganism. I forgot the German word. Those of you who speak German probably know. It’s blood and soil. That was the slogan of the Nazis – blood and soil.

The little Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts all sang hymns to blood and soil. What they meant by that – blood wasn’t war. Blood is what we call the genes of the Aryan race. The idea that the genes of the Aryan race (blond, blue eyes) – that race was destined for that soil. So when you invade Europe and destroy the Slavs - get rid of them, the Poles and everybody else – so you can have the Germans who the Aryan race owns that soil. The Aryan race has a destiny to that soil. It’s all wrapped up and Mark documents it all in his book. It’s a fundamental piece of research. I think it’s very relevant. That’s why I asked him to publish it. I think it’s very relevant.

The ecology people freaked out over this book. Mark got death threats for writing it. This is how the other side always acts. If they can’t argue with you, they try to kill you. The point is that I wanted it exposed for what it is. I think Mark did a good job of exposing it.

Question

That’s a good point you’re making though.

This point that he’s making - you really want to listen to what he just said because this has infuriated me for decades. How these PhD’s get away with this absolute irrational unverifiable speculation in the classroom. If a Christian got in a classroom at HCC (Harvard Community College) and taught creationism which has more foundation than anything this guy is talking about in religion he would be fired – absolutely fired. But these guys can get away with making stupid claims.

At MIT I remember we had a small group of Christian guys; but boy we were really aggressive – probably too much so. There was a lecture hall of probably 500 kids. We had to take a humanities course; you know, so you can get the blessing of the liberal arts department. This guy was teaching a course in religions. He was one of the most famous guys. Maybe this guy was teaching out there with you now would surely know his name. He’s called Houston Smith. Professor Smith wrote a book, one of the first comparative religious books, not the first but one of the textbooks in the 50s or 60s. He would get up here with 400 to 500 and get up here with stupid things like Jesus was really involved in economics. The only economics that I can think of was when He found coins in the fish’s mouth in the Sea of Galilee, or something like this—some stupid thing. We got so fed up with it as Christians; we sat four of us—one of us over here, one over here and a couple up in here. When he got into this really stupid stuff – we had it all worked out before the lecture – one of use would raise our hands over here and ask him a question.

If the rest of us felt like the prof was skating on ice, the next guy over here would be cute and say, “Professor, I don’t think you answered his question. The question was ...”

And we would drive him crazy because it would appear like this was coming from all kinds of places in the lecture hall. We were all scattered in the whole lecture hall.

The problem with that approach is it backfires after a while because everybody in the class gets tired of the debate and they just want to get on and pass the test and get out of the door. The rest of the class kind of got hostile to us because we were holding up the class.

When you’re in college young people, you’ve got to go with the flow. You can try maybe to ask questions. See if you can probe the logic, sort of act like spies and find out the thinking.

The other problem is in college you simply do not have the time to go to the library and research every little thing. This guy’s got it on you 20 to one as far as time and research goes. You can’t win the battle; and it’s even worse in the graduate level. At the undergraduate level you can hide and sort of be a pain in the neck and there’s not too much they can do to you. If you are a grad student however, if you don’t go along with everything your fellowship will dry up and you’ll get booted out of the department and you can’t transfer credit from university to university at the graduate level. Actually the graduate students are almost slaves to the institution. You just have to learn to be somewhat deceptive. If you get a professor who is pushing you like when Dr. Austin went up here to Penn State; you can basically fabricate a story that, “Well I picked this topic for my dissertation because of this, this and this; and don’t share with the prof what you are really about – that you are going to stick it to him after you get your degree. But until you get your degree and PhD …

That’s what he did and then Penn State got all hacked.

“He didn’t act like a Christian. He was deceiving us.”

Well, it’s war. Deception is morally acceptable in war. That’s why the story of Rahab is in there. She got praised for her lying. That’s what James is all about.