Obedience and God's Promises

Moses now turns to a very difficult idea to grasp, get a hold of. He has been talking to them about the fact you're going to go into the land of promise. Here are the things God's asked you to do. If you do them, you will prosper. If you don't, you'll be in disaster. And he's held up before them all the law that they were supposed to obey and all the things they were supposed to do. And now he changes directions on them. He says, told them when they went in, if they did everything, obeyed God completely, he would bless them, give them the land, they would prosper. All the things that he promised, I'll give you guidance, I'll give you wisdom, I'll give you protection, I'll provide for you, and you'll be a blessing to the whole world. Now he comes to say, and when all these blessings take place, and then he talked about the curses. If you turn away from God, what negative things would happen in your life and how God would react in a negative way to you. The curses you'd put all of chapter 30 was a long list of the curses that would come if they were disobedient to the things God told them. The promises of God don't come true automatically. One of the biggest difficulties that people have in reading the Bible is they come across a promise that God makes to his people, and they assume that that promise is for everybody in the world, whether they're followers of Christ or not. And so they read what the scripture says that God is going to do for his people that are faithful to him, and assume, well, I can claim that promise. You really can't. If you're not in that position where you are living in obedience to God, the promise made is not yours. You put it this way. If you say to your kids, if you mow the grass, I'm going to buy you a bicycle. And then your neighbor kid, two streets, two doors down, comes and mows your grass and asks for a bicycle, you'd say, what do you mean? I'm going to give you a bicycle. I promised my child I'd do that. When people come and read the Bible, all the things that God promises to his children who live in obedience to him and claim those promises, it leads them to disaster because they think that God has made that promise to them, and it doesn't come true because they're not living in obedience to him. Then they get mad at God because right here it promises this. And it didn't happen to me. So Moses is talking to people clearly about the result that comes from living in obedience to God and also the consequences that come when you're not in obedience to God. When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul to everything I've commanded you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortune and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he has scattered you. Now the promises he made or the warnings he gave about the curses that would fall to them for their rebellion, he's now talking about not what's going to happen when they get in the land of promise. He sort of assumes that when they get in the land of promise they're going to disobey God. There's good reason why you do that because all of us do. None of us are completely obedient to God all the time. But he also knew something else that rebellion against God is progressive. It's a kind of spiritual disease that grows. If you find someday that you're disobedient to God in one arena and nothing happens to you, you say, well, okay, and now I'm free to do whatever I want to do, and it begins to creep in your life. And whenever you're living the way God wants you to live and you start compromising, Satan has an easy way to get you to compromise more and more because you do one thing and compromise and the world doesn't fall apart. And so you think, well, maybe I can change something else. And suddenly you begin to drift away from God. It might start where you say, well, you know, I'm really busy. I don't have time to read the Bible every day. I don't have time to talk to God. And I'm not sure that prayer really makes that much difference. So you quit praying, quit reading the Bible. You quit being in fellowship with other believers. And it doesn't happen overnight. And so it's very subtle because you don't see it in a powerful way. So he knew the human natures of the character that it often leads us to be rebellious against God and drift a long way from him. So when that happens to you, he said, and you finally come to realize, he uses the language here that says, and when you take these curses to heart, in other words, bad things can happen to you and you have two ways of dealing with them. You can say, whoa, this is just a bad day, or I've really had a string of bad luck. Or you can stop and look at those and say, Is there any connection between the things that have happened to me and my own obedience to God? If you ask that question, then God will begin to help you see if it's true or not. It doesn't always mean that bad things are the result of your sinful behavior. But if you have sinful behavior in your life, then bad things do come to you in two different ways. One is when God removes his guidance from you and you say, Well, I know more about how to do than I don't need to ask God about it. He'll let you go ahead and make your choices. But they're not going to be as good as the ones God would guide you to. And if you say, Well, you know, I'm doing okay. I'm too busy to go to church or read the Bible or do the things God wants me to do. And then you find suddenly, slowly, things begin to deteriorate financially. Till one day you realize, Man, I'm in a terrible financial circumstance. Or you say, You know, I want to make my own choices, do my own things. And all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation where you're in danger. Danger for your marriage, danger for your children, danger for your family or physical danger. All kinds of circumstances could come. God removes his protection from you because he's made that promise to his children. Not to everybody in the world, but his children in faithful covenant with him. The story of the prodigal son is a good example of what he's talking about here. You know, the prodigal son took the money, went out and spent it doing whatever he wanted to do. And he lost all of his money. There he was broke, feeding the pigs. The scripture in the New Testament says, And one day he came to himself. Suddenly it dawned on him. I used to be able to sit at my dad's table and we had everything we needed to eat. Why am I here looking at the food that I'm feeding to the pigs, thinking maybe I could find some of this to eat. I'm hungry. Then he realized, Why am I here? I'm here because I said to my dad, I don't want to live the way you want me to live. I want to live the way I want to live. And in the middle of all that, this is what has gotten me. The servants in my father's house do better than I do. And he started back to his dad's house. That parable is about God. It's about what he's talking about. If you drift away from God and you begin to discover in your life that disaster is on every corner, you might want to stop and say, What have I done to get here? What instructions of God have I violated? It may not be that that's the case. But it certainly is for many people. Because they have failed to do what God wants them to do. Rebelled against his authority. Now he said, If that happens to you, and you take the things that are happening to you to heart. That is, you say to yourself, Why in the world is this happening to me? Wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations. He's also predicting here that whenever they entered the land of promise, God said, If you act the way the people who lived here before you act, I'm going to drive you out of this land too. He's now predicting that they're going to go into captivity before they even went in the land. God knew enough about the people of Israel to realize that they weren't going to be faithful to him. Now he said, When that happens to you, no matter where you scattered in all the world. Because of God taking his protection away from you. And when you and wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations. And when you and your children return to the Lord your God. And obey him with all your heart and with all your soul. According to everything I command you today. Then the Lord will restore your fortunes. Notice what he talks about. He talks about not believing in God. I hear so many people who say, I believe in God. The Bible is not so keen on that as it is on living in submission to God. Now, believing in God ought to lead to that. When people say, I believe in God. And they live a lifestyle where they disobey everything the Bible says. You say, well, do you believe that God is in charge of the world? Do you believe if you obey him that he'll reward you? Do you believe if you rebel against him that he will bring his judgment on you? What kind of God do you believe in? What they mean by that is, I believe there is a God. He wrote the Bible, but it doesn't affect my lifestyle. That's not what the Bible means by faith. The Bible describes faith here in very clear, plain action words. When you and your children return to the Lord, the ruler, the boss, the one in charge, the Lord your God, and you obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, according to everything I've commanded you today, then the Lord will restore your fortunes. Here's what faith is. You believe the things God says are true, and you believe that it is your responsibility to obey him. You do this not with a feeling of force or pressure. You do it because in your heart, in your life, you want to do this. You do it with everything inside of you, your heart and your soul committed to submission and obedience to God. Why? Because you believe that God is the proper ruler of the world. And if he's the proper ruler of the world, you should do what he tells you. And you respect him for this. And you honor him for this. You could put this in context of a parent and children. There are a lot of reasons why a child would obey their parents. They might obey their parents to get them to do good things for them, try to manipulate their parents. They could also obey their parents because they were hoping to be able to get a benefit from them in some way. They could also obey their parents because they respect them. Now, which of these different ways would a parent value? If you just knew your kids were obeying you because they thought they could get something out of you, you would be angry about it. God is smart enough to know whether our obedience to him is out of respect for who he is and out of the conviction that he's telling us the truth about the way that we should live. He wants us to understand that what he's telling us is the truth and to live as if it were true. Now, faith in the Bible means that we have faith that God's telling the truth. We have faith that what he says is going to happen. We trust him to be the person he says he is. And because of that, we live in obedience to what he says. We trust him. We trust him to guide us in the choices we make. We trust him to provide for us. We trust him to protect us. We trust that if we do what he tells us, our life is going to be a blessing to the whole world around us. It is this inside of us that God looks at, not necessarily saying, well, I believe there is a God, but letting God direct our minds the way we think and direct our choices, our actions. That's what God is saying. Now, Moses is saying, whenever you do this and you obey with all your heart and soul according to everything I've commanded you, the consequence is then the Lord will restore your fortunes. God gives us ample opportunity to come to him. He's not a one-shot deal. Okay, I gave you an opportunity. Now you turned your back on it. It's over. Anytime you come to the place, and he's talking here about the church now, the people of Israel. Anytime you come to the place where you as a people of God are ready to do what I tell you to do, I will always be there and respond to redeem you. God does not cut us off. He says to the people of Israel, wherever you go, however bad it is, if you ever come to the place where you say, God, I realize my mistake, we are going to live in obedience to you. As a people and a nation, I will redeem you. I will turn around and restore your fortunes. There are all kinds of ways in which people talk about how you help churches grow and things that you do, and there are techniques, and there are all kinds of schemes that you can put together. You can look at churches that are big and say, okay, we can be like that. The Bible has one thing that results in the people of God prospering. It is when the people of God trust him, obey him with all their hearts, and with all their soul, according to everything he has told us to do. That is what God says opens the door to prosperity for the church. Now let me define what the Bible means by prosperity. When the Bible talks about the fact that God is going to prosper his people, he is not talking about everybody will have a Lamborghini in the church. He is not talking about everybody is going to have a $20 million mansion, in spite of what some of the preachers say on TV. What he means is you will have everything you need, and you will have peace in your life and a sense of fulfillment. Not everybody in a $20 million mansion has fulfillment or peace. You see people all the time that are messed up as they can be who are wealthy. God promises enough of the things of this world for contentment. And he promises more than that. He promises peace for us. I will give you these things. Whenever God talks about a church being big, it is not necessarily always a result of the fact that you are more godly than the people around you. What God promises the church is I will make you an effective tool for me. That is what the church is to be. A place where people come to know Christ and grow to become like him and find their fullness of life in him. That is what he does for us. The church can be broken. It can be so far away from God. But when the people inside the church are ready to say we will do whatever you tell us to do, then God honors that. When the people in the church say with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind we are going to do what you tell us is the right thing, then he guarantees he will restore that church to its vitality. God makes his promise to the people of Israel. We are the people of God, the church is. He makes it also to individuals throughout the scriptures in the New Testament in a more direct way to individuals. It is the way by which you find life. If you will believe that the things I tell you to do are right and true and that I really have your best interest at heart and you trust me so that you begin to think the way I tell you to think and make choices the way I tell you to choose, I guarantee you that I will restore you to the relationship I have with you. It doesn't mean that you won't have trouble. But it does mean that you won't have despair. You will have confidence that even in the middle of all the trouble, God is with you and he will guide you through the difficulties because he has promised that he would. I'd like you to pray with me. I want to ask you to think about someone you know that's going through difficult times. Do you look at their lives and see that some of those difficult times are the result of the fact that they're not putting in practice the things of the scripture? Ask God to open their eyes and to see that their relationship with him could be the source of so much of the difficulty they face. Has it come to your mind in the last few weeks or months that maybe some things about you, your behavior, your lifestyle, your choices should change? If he asks for those choices, if those choices are changing from something that's bad to something good, I can tell you that's God talking to you. He's trying to change the course of your life. And he's trying to do that so that you will find life in all of its fullness. And he's trying to do that so that you will find life in all of its fullness. Would you have the courage to say to God, OK, I've heard you speaking to me. I will do what you tell me. I believe in you. I trust you. From now on, it's going to be different. You give me the wisdom and the ability and I will obey. Father, we're thankful that you've given us warning signs. Warning signs showing us the way of life and warning signs that show us the way of death. Now, what we ask for you is that you would bring to mind where we stand with you, that we might know whether to proceed forward or to reverse our course. Give us the confidence that you will redeem your people. The people who live in obedience to you and obey you with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.