Deuteronomy chapter 28. This
is a very, very long chapter. It's got 68 verses in it. And
I want us to, we can't just start and read it all, but I want us
to look at it, if I can keep track here, with all these different
verses and read them to you. I want you to keep your Bibles
handy because I want us to turn to some of these places in this
chapter. These 68 verses It is concerning blessings and curses. I guess we could probably entitle
this, Earning Blessings or Deserving Curses. Blessings sought after. Blessings earned. If you ever
heard of such a thing, that is what we will call this. Earned
blessings. and deserved curses. And that
is what this is about. The first 14 verses here is about
the blessings. And then from verses 15 through
68, the curses, the threatening of curses. So let's look at this. Here in the first 14 verses,
verses 3 through 13 really are the promised blessings. Let's
look at some of them. Look here in verse 3. Blessed
shalt thou be in the city, blessed shalt thou be in the field. Well,
that's their personal lives, individual lives. Blessed shall
be the fruit of your body, your children. Blessed shall be the
fruit of your ground, the things that they plant and grow, abundant
crops. And blessed shall be the fruit
of your cattle and the increase of all your cows and your oxen. and the flocks of thy sheep.
Blessed shalt thou be in thy basket and in thy store." Their
basket is what they put their fruit in when they went out to
sell it or when they went up to Jerusalem to take the firstfruits. Their store was, it calls it
here, the kneading troughs. Some says the storehouses. In
verse 6, "...Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed
shalt thou be when thou goest out." Well, that's just individual
blessings. to these Israelites, individual
blessings. And he says here in verse 6,
or verse 9, look in verse 9. And the Lord shall establish
thee and holy people unto Himself, blessed as a nation, as He has
sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the
Lord thy God, and walk in His way. In verse 12, look at this. And the Lord shall open unto
thee his good treasure, the heaven, to give rain unto thy land in
his season, and to bless all the work of thy hand. And thou
shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. And
the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail, and thou
shalt be above only, and shalt not be beneath. So individual
blessings and blessings as a nation, He was going to bless them. Loan
to many people and not have to borrow from anybody. He was going
to prosper them. And then in verse 7, He talks
about their enemies, the other nations that were their enemies.
Here's how He's going to bless them concerning their enemies.
And the Lord shall cause your enemies that rise up against
you to be smitten, defeated before your face. They shall come out
against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. And back
in verse 10 again, And all the people of the earth shall see
that thou art called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be
afraid of thee. So all the nations were going
to respect them, all the nations were going to fear them, because
the Lord was their God. But one of the things you will
know about these blessings, you notice here probably as I read
them, all of them are carnal things. Did you notice that?
All of them are temporal blessings. What the Lord would give them
and their children, be healthy, have plenty of children. Their
crops would grow and increase. The nations wouldn't come against
them for war. All of these things were blessings. Now you read through the book
of writings of Moses and you will see the promised blessings
so many times. God promised the children of
Israel all kinds of blessings. But here was the conditions of
their blessings. And here is why we call this
earned blessings. Look at the conditions in verse
1 and 2. And it shall come to pass, if
thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy
God, to observe to do all his commandments which I command
thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high
above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings
shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto
the voice of the Lord thy God." And look in verse 9. And the
Lord shall establish thee and holy people unto Himself, as
He hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of
the Lord thy God, and walk in all His ways. And look in verse
13, And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail, and
thou shalt be above only, and shalt not be beneath, if thou
hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I
command thee this day to observe and do them, and thou shalt not
go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day,
to the right hand or to the left, to go after the gods and serve
them." So what was the condition of these blessings here? If they
would keep, if they would obey, the commandments that this law
required of them. They had to obey them all and
keep them all. If thou go not aside from any
of the words, then He said, I will bless you. And of course these
requirements extended to all of their law. It extended to
the moral law that you and I sometimes call the Ten Commandments. It
extended to the ceremonial law, the priesthood and all the sacrifices. And it extended to the civil
law. They had a civil law, how they were to treat one another
in their daily lives. As I thought of this, I thought
of what Moses said. And Paul quoted him in Romans
chapter 10 verse 5 where it said, Moses described the righteousness
which is of the law. that the man that doeth these
things shall live by them. The man that's going to enjoy
the blessings that's promised to him under this covenant, he
must do those things that God requires of him for a blessing.
That's the requirements. Now let's look at curses right
quickly. Look at some curses. That's the
blessings, just a few of them, not all of them. But that's what
we find here. And this is the requirements.
Don't turn aside from anything that I've commanded you. Keep
all that I've commanded you. Now let's look at the curses.
And here's the way we're going to have to look at this if we get through
with it. In verses 15 and through verse 68 speaks of God's cursing. If they don't obey, the voice
of the Lord and His law to keep it all. The curses that the Lord
would bring on them, the cause of it. Now let's look at some
of these. These are many more than the
blessings. I guess because the Lord's threatening
sometimes under the covenant of works is much greater than
His blessings. Let's look at it then in verses
16 through verse 19. Look in verse 15 first. It shall
come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the
Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments and His
statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses
shall come upon thee, and overtake thee. And notice in verses 16
through verse 19, the blessings are reversed. The curses replace
the blessings. Just as He promised to bless
them for their obedience, now He reverses that and says, I'll
curse you if you do not do. Now look in verse 16. Cursed
shalt thou be in the city, cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed
shall thou be in thy basket and in thy store. Cursed shall be
the fruit of thy body, the fruit of thy land, the increase of
your cows, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shall you be
when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. See how that is reversed? All
the curses come and replace the blessings because of obedience,
disobedience. And look in verse 20 in verse 22. Here's the sicknesses
that's going to come upon them. Now imagine these things. Here's
the advantage we have over these Jews. We've got the history.
Now we can look back not only the 2,000 years or 1,500 years
from Moses to Christ or wherever it was, we can look back now
2,000 years. And we can see the cursings that came on these people.
And here's the cursings that God promised to the children
of Israel. Look what He said in verse 20
through verse 22. The Lord shall send upon thee
cursing, this is the sickness, vexation, rebuke, and all that
thou settest thy hand unto for to do, until thou shalt be destroyed,
and until thou perish quickly, because of the wickedness of
thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me. The Lord shall make
the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he hath consumed thee from
off the land, whether thou goest to possess it. The Lord shall
smite thee with a consumption, and with fever, and with inflammation,
and with an extreme burning, and with a sword, and with blasting,
and with mildew, and they shall pursue thee until thou perish."
That's the sicknesses. And look over in verse 60 and
61. He names some more. In verse 60 and verse 61. Moreover,
He will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou
wast afraid of, and they shall cleave unto thee, also every
sickness and every plague which is not written in this book of
the law. Then will the Lord bring upon thee until thou be destroyed."
Isn't that sad and dark? That's dark just to read that,
isn't it? And look at another curse. Look
back over in verse 23 and 24. Look at the drought. and thy heaven that is over thy
head shall be brass." No clouds, no rain. "...and the earth that
is under thee shall be iron. The Lord shall make the rain
of thy land powder and dust. From heaven shall it come down
upon thee until thou be destroyed." And look at their enemies. Before
their enemies were going to be subdued and fear them, but look
in verse 25 and verse 26. The LORD shall cause thee to
be smitten before your enemies, that thou shalt go out one way
against them, and flee seven ways before them, and shalt be
removed unto all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcass
shall be meat unto all fowls of the earth, and to the beasts
of the earth, and no man shall fray them away, ram them away. That's the enemies. And look
in verse 36 and 37. He mentions some more things
about their enemies. And the Lord shall bring thee
and thy king, which thou shalt set over thee. Now, what's he
even talking about? A king? Nobody knew that they
were going to set a king over them, did they? It was hundreds
of years after this that they set a king over them. But God
knows all things, doesn't He? A man told me one time, he said,
the Lord had no idea that Israel would wind up the way they did.
Well, He predicted it, didn't He? He told them exactly what
they were going to do. He said, You're going to set
a king over you, and then after a while I'm going to bring you
and your king that you've got over you in those days. And he
said, And to a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known,
and thou shalt serve other gods, wood and stone, and thou shalt
become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations,
whether the Lord shall lead thee. And look in verse 48. Therefore thou shalt serve thine
enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger,
and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things. And he shall put a yoke of iron
upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. The Lord shall
bring a nation against thee from far, from the ends of the earth,
as swift as the eagle fly, a nation whose tongue thou doest not understand,
a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person
of the old, nor show favour." And then in verse 53, And thou shalt eat the..." Look
at this. This is something else. Verse 52, "...and they shall
besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls
come down, wherein thou trustest throughout all thy land. And
he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy
land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee." And here in
verses 29 and verse 35 is their personal life. Look at this, how sad this is.
Look what a curse this is. Curses in their own personal
life. Look in verse 29. And thou shalt grope at noonday,
as the blind gropeth in darkness. And thou shalt not prosper in
thy ways. And thou shalt be only oppressed
and spoiled evermore. And no man shall save thee. And
you go on and read it there in verse 30. Look at this. And thou
shalt betroth a wife, marry a wife, and another man shall lie with
her. Thou shalt build a house, and thou shalt not dwell therein.
Thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes
thereof. Thine ox shall be slain before your eyes. and thou shalt
not eat thereof, thine eyes shall be violently taken away from
before thy face, and shall not be restored to thee, thy sheep
shall be given unto thy enemies, and thou shalt have none to rescue
them. And look at this, thy sons and
thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine
eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all the day
long, and there shall be no might in thy hands. the fruit of thy
land, and thy labors shall nations which thou knowest not shall
eat up. And thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed always,
so that thou shalt be mad for the sight of your eyes which
thou seest. And the Lord shall smite thee
in the knee and in the legs with a sore blanched balls that cannot
be healed. from the sole of your foot even
unto the crown or top of your head." Two more, let's look at
two more in here. And out of fear and distress,
they lost affection for one another. Look here in verses 54 through
verse 57. This is so sad. So that the man,
when they were taken captive in the strange lands, here's
what would happen. They'd lose all their tenderness
and love one for another. so that the man that is tender
among you and very delicate, his eyes shall be evil towards
his brother, and towards the wife of his bosom, and towards
the remnant of his children which he shall leave, so that he will
not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he
shall eat, because he hath nothing left him in the siege and in
the straightness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in
all thy gates. the tender and delicate woman
among you, which would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon
the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be
evil towards the husband of her bosom, and towards her son, and
towards her daughter, and towards her loved one, her young one,
that cometh out from between her feet, towards her children
which she shall bear. For she shall eat them for want
of all things secretly in the siege, straightness, wherewith
thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates." Now this was so
sad because this has always happened with the Jews. Whenever they
were under siege, they not only eat some of their young who had
died, but They turned on one another. You remember the story
of Anne Frank in Nazi Germany? One of the ways they found her
was her own people turned on her. They always did this. They got under so much stress
and fear and anxiety that their enemies hard certain Jews to
tell on their neighbors. And so then father turned on
son, son turned on father, mother turned on daughter, and they
turned one another in to the authorities and had one another
arrested and killed. They lost all sympathy for one
another. That's a curse. That's the curse. And look at this one, one more.
In verse 63, if I've got the right one here. Verse 63. Their conditions among the nations
of their enemies. And it shall come to pass that
as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, to multiply you
so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and to bring
you to nothing. And you shall be plucked off
the land whether thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall
scatter you among all people from the one end of earth even
to the other. And there thou shalt serve other
gods which neither you nor your fathers have known, even wood
and stone. And among all these nations shall
thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest. But the Lord shall give thee
there a trembling heart, and felon of eyes, and sorrow of
mind, and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee. Thou shalt
fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life.
In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it was evening, And
in the evening you shall say, Would God it were morning, where
the fear of thy heart, or where thou shalt fear, or the sight
of thy eyes, which thou shalt see." That's the condition among
their enemies. And look in verse 59. Look, it's
going to be a long, long stay, a long, long curse. Then the
Lord will make thy plagues wonderful. and the plague of thy seed, even
great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sickness, and of long
continuance." It started in the book of Judges. They forsook
the Lord and His laws, His covenant, and He began to bring them into
captivity. Then they went off into Babylon. And then in A.D. 70 when Rome
came against them in the army, they carried them off into all
nations. And for 2,000 years now, look at the Jewish nation. Look at this nation. They have
been under a curse for all this time. And why did the curses
come? Well, look at why the curse come.
Look in verse 45 and verse 47. Moreover, all these curses shall
come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till
you be destroyed, because you hearkened not unto the voice
of the Lord your God to keep His commandments and His statutes
which He commanded you. And they shall be unto thee for
a sign and wonder, and unto thy seed for ever. Because thou servest
not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, you served him not with gladness
of heart, for the abundance of these things. Therefore shalt
thou serve your enemy, which the Lord thy God shall send against
thee." In verse 62, And it shall, and you shall,
be left few in number, or as you were, as the stars of heaven
for multitude, because thou wouldst not obey the voice of the Lord
thy God." Now that's a sad thing, and I wouldn't want to just keep
reading these to you because it's a sad, heartbreaking thing,
isn't it? But what does this show us? What
does this show us? You can't buy blessings. You
just can't buy blessings. You can't earn blessings. But
you can sure deserve curses. You can deserve curses. What was their problem? What
was Israel's problem? They had two problems. Just two
problems. We can narrow it down to just
two problems they had. And I'll show them to you. I'll
show you the two problems that they had. The first one was this. This law, this covenant that
God put them under was too strict. It was too cumbersome. It was
too burdensome. Now let me show you what the
New Testament says about that. Look in Acts. Look in the book
of Acts chapter 15 and look in verse 1. Look in
the book of Acts chapter 15 and look in verse 1. This covenant
was just absolutely too burdensome. It was too cumbersome for them.
It required too much. It absolutely required too much.
Look here in Acts chapter 15. And certain men, verse 1, which
came down from Judea, down from Jerusalem, taught the brethren
and said, Except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you
cannot be saved. Circumcision was commanded of
the law. And then in verse 2, Wherefore
Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with
them, They determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain other
of them should go up to Jerusalem and to the apostles and elders
about this question. And look in verse 5, they got
up here to Jerusalem. And there rose up certain of
the set of the Pharisees which believed, and here is what they
said, that it was needful, necessary to circumcise the believers and
command them to keep the law of Moses. They wanted all the
law of Moses kept. The ceremonial law, the civil
law, and the moral law. Be circumcised and keep the law
of Moses. In verse 6, the apostles and
elders came together to consider of this matter. And when there
had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them, Then,
brethren, you know how that a long while ago God made choice among
us that the Gentiles, by my voice, should hear the word of the gospel
and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts,
bear them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as He did
unto us, and put no difference between us and them, purifying
their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why tempt you
God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither
our fathers nor we were able to Why couldn't they keep the law?
Too cumbersome. Too much required. Who could
even remember all that they were to keep? We couldn't bear it,
Peter said. I can't bear it, he said. I'm
an apostle and I can't bear it. And look at Moses. What did he
say? He said, I exceedingly fear and
quake when I think of this covenant of works and how it was given
upon Mount Sinai. And He said if so much as a beast
touched the mountain, they had to kill it. If your child ran
off from you and touched that mountain, they shot him through
with an arrow. This was the God of judgment
and He required absolute and strict obedience to everything
that He had commanded. and threaten disobedience with
a curse. A man thinks he can keep the
whole law, he just does not understand the law. We may keep a bunch
of traditions, we may have a bunch of preferences or convictions
and we keep those, but to keep the law you have to know it all.
And who knows it all? You have to obey it. Cursed be
every man that continueth not in what? in all things written
in the book of the law to do them. I tell you, they just could
not avoid the curse. They just could not avoid the
curse. Where are they now? Where is that nation now? Why? Why are they there? They
continue not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith
the Lord. Now that's the covenant of works,
isn't it? And it requires more than you and I even know or understand. That's the first thing. It was
too strict. And secondly was this. They didn't have a heart. They
didn't have a heart to keep it. Look in Deuteronomy chapter 5.
Look here when the law was given. Moses was rehearsing about what
took place on Mount Sinai in Deuteronomy chapter 5. Moses had gone up into the mountain.
The mountain was smoking on fire. Angels were there, sound of a
trumpet, and God was writing on these stones, Thou shalt have
no other God before me. Thou shalt never make unto you
any graven image. Honor your father and mother.
Remember this Sabbath day to keep it holy. Thou shalt not
steal. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not love it. And on
and on it goes. Covet. On and on it goes. These
ten commandments. And listen here what the Lord
told the children of Israel. Here is what He said your whole
problem is. Look what He says in verse 23. Deuteronomy 5, And
it came to pass when ye heard the voice out of the midst of
the darkness, for the mountain did burn with fire, that ye came
near unto me, Moses said, even all the heads of your tribes
and your elders. And ye said, Behold, the Lord
our God hath showed us his glory and his greatness. And we have
heard his voice out of the midst of the fire, and we have seen
this day that God doth talk with man, and he liveth. Now, therefore,
why should we die? For this great fire will consume
us. If we hear the voice of the Lord
our God any more, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh
that hath heard the voice of the Lord God speaking out of
the midst of the fire as we have and lived? Go thou near and hear
all that the Lord our God hath said, and speak thou unto us,
all the Lord our God shall speak unto thee, and we will hear it
and do it. And the Lord heard the voice
of your words when you spake unto me. And the Lord said unto
me, I heard the voice of the words of this people, which they
have spoken unto thee. They have well said all that
they have spoken. that there was such an unheart
in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments
always, that it might be well with them, and with their children
for ever." Oh, that there was a heart in them. But that's the
whole problem, isn't it? There wasn't a heart in them.
There was no heart in them. That's always been the Jews'
problem. They didn't have a heart. But that's our problem too, isn't
it? That's our problem when we look at the covenant of works,
when we try to earn a righteousness that God will accept us in, when
we try to keep all His commandments. Here's our problem. By nature,
as He finds us in our unregenerate state, we have no heart to do
it. The Apostle Paul said the law
is good. It's spiritual. But he said,
I'm carnal. The problem's not with the law.
The problem is with us. If Adam had this law before his
fall, he could have kept it all with delight, but not after the
fall. And the problem is our hearts. The heart's deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked. The problem with these Jews,
with the law, They had no heart to keep it. And that was the
problem they had with the gospel too, wasn't it? They didn't have
a heart for the law and they didn't have a heart for the gospel.
They wouldn't believe Moses and they wouldn't believe the Lord
Jesus Christ when He came. And Paul said, when we go trying
to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, they try to stop us. They please
not God and they're contrary to all men. And Paul said the
wrath of God has come upon them to the uttermost. Two thousand
years you and I can look back and see the wrath of God upon
that people, can't we? And it's still upon them. It's
still upon them. What can we and I learn from
all of this? The promise of earned blessings. Now listen to this,
if this ain't so. The promise of earned blessings. You do this and I'll bless you.
If you obey me, I will bless you. The promise of earned blessings
and the threats of cursings never brought the first soul to enjoy
the Lord and fill one heart with gladness. You can promise a man
if he'll do all sorts of things, and you can threaten him if you
don't, but leave him to his self. And I'll tell you what he'll
do. He'll never enjoy the Lord. He'll never enjoy the Lord. Because
thou serveth not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and with
gladness of heart. You mean after all the promises
of blessings and after all the threatenings of the curses, they
still did not serve the Lord with joyfulness and with gladness?
No. No. Trying to earn a blessing or
avoid a curse may make a man proud. It may make himself righteous. But it will never bring him to
rejoice in the Lord and fill his heart with gladness. It never
will. Listen to this and see if this
ain't so. Until a man shakes himself loose from this covenant
of works, this legal covenant, this law, and find himself in
another covenant in the covenant of grace, he will remain under
bondage and the curse that this law pronounces against every
disobedience. And how does this shake and loose
come? I call it shake and loose. That may not be very good theology,
Wayne, but I guess you call it shake and loose from this covenant
of works. And I call it that sometimes
because we are always having to shake loose from it. Aren't
we? We're always trying to earn blessings,
aren't we? And here's the way we shake ourselves
loose from it. By hearing. By hearing what God
in Christ has done. What God in Christ has finished
already. And what's He done? The Bible
says He was delivered for our transgressions. He was bruised
for, or in the place of, us, for our iniquities. Listen to
this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died in our place, in
our stead, in our room. When we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God by the death of His Son. That's something
that God has already did in Christ. He's already purged sin. He's
already made reconciliation. He has already given us an atonement
for our sins. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
has already fulfilled all the demands of the covenant of works
Himself in our stead. When God has mercy upon a poor
sinner, He does not do it at the expense of justice. Justice
has been satisfied. Jesus Christ has did everything
this law required to be done. You walk not in my ways. You
wouldn't hear my voice. You didn't do it. Peter said,
We couldn't, Lord. It was too much. It was too strict.
But I'll tell you one who did do it. And you know how he did
it? With full joy of his heart. Lord, I come. I rejoice. I delight to do Thy will. O my
God! Yea, thy law is within my heart. He kept it. He did it. He fulfilled
it in the days of his life. And listen to this. In the days
of his death, when he hung up on Calvary's tree, he suffered
the curse for not doing it. He fulfilled its demands in his
life on our behalf, and in his death he suffered the curse on
our behalf. As soon as we hear, as soon as
we really hear, we may go for years and never hear, but as
soon as we hear this glorious gospel, then we joy in God through
our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have received the reconciliation. As soon as we hear, we don't
lift a finger to do, it's hearing. How have we brought from this
covenant of works to grace? It's not doing, it's hearing.
Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing
of faith? It's by hearing, isn't it? By
hearing. We're delivered from the bondage
of the law and sin and guilt and we serve the Lord. We serve
Him even with a joyful heart. Not to be blessed. but because
we are blessed. That's what you find out when
you hear that you're blessed. And when you find out that you're
already blessed, that you don't have to work to earn your blessings,
then that's when you'll have joy of your heart. And that's
when you'll work your hardest for the glory of Him that loved
you and saved you from this covenant of work. I will not work my soul
to save. That my Lord has done I work
like any slave for the sake of God's dear Son. He hath blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. Be ye kind, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you."
What a blessing forgiveness is! What did you do to get it? Nothing! It was in Christ, was
it not? That blessing was in the Lord
Jesus. He hath given to us eternal life and this life is in His
Son. What did we do to get that life?
We found it in Christ, didn't we? When you have Christ, you've
got everything. You've got all the blessings
of God in Jesus Christ. Did you ever notice this? I didn't
notice this until today. I was talking with a friend of
mine. And Ben-Him's talking about this. Did you ever notice this?
The last word in the Old Testament is cursed. Did you ever notice
Malachi chapter 3 and verse 6? Cursed. Ain't that a fitting
way to end the Old Testament? You know the first message that
the Lord Jesus ever preached in the New Testament was Matthew
chapter 5 and verse 3? You know what He said the first
word out of His mouth? Blessed. Isn't that wonderful? We close the Old Testament and
that is where we see all the curses. And we come over and
the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, opens His mouth to the poor and
the needy and He says, Blessed, blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the broken in spirit.
Blessed are the crushed in the spirit. For theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. How did they get such a spirit?
How did they get such a heart? Blessed are the poor in heart. Broken heart. How'd they get
such a broken heart? Grace gave it to them. He breaks your heart. Gives you
a poor heart. And then He looks at you and
says, Boy, you're blessed. Yours is the kingdom of heaven.
Everything God requires was done for us by Jesus Christ our Lord
in the days of His flesh. And everything He requires to
be done in us, He works it in us. It's a gift. It's a gift. Listen to what he says. He don't
leave it to us anymore, brothers and sisters, and aren't you glad
of that? He said, I demand they do this and I demand they do
that, but I'm going to see they do it and I'm going to see they
do that. Listen to what he says. He told them in the Old Testament,
make ye a new heart and a new spirit. He said, that's your
whole trouble. Make ye a new heart. Now, let's be honest,
brothers and sisters, don't God tell us sometimes to do things
that He knows and we know we can't do? Can you make your new
heart? That's silly to think of that,
isn't it? And He tells us things like this to make us know we
can't. To make us know what He requires, He's going to have
to supply. So what does He say? I will take
them from among the heathen. I will sprinkle clean water upon
them. A new heart will I give them. A new spirit will I put within
them. I will take the stony heart. I will give them a heart of flesh.
I will put My Spirit within them. I will cause them to walk in
My statues. I will. That is the new covenant. That is the covenant of grace.
God's will. Of His own will begot He us with
the Word of Truth. Aren't you glad? Aren't you happy
when you can begin to understand that you're saved according to
God's will? Before it all rested in your
little flimsy will, didn't it not? And it was a flimsy salvation
to say the best, wasn't it? He called it such a thing. But
this is God's will. That's the new covenant, the
covenant of grace. It's God's will. of His own will. The covenant of works is for
the strong. It's for the righteous. It's
for the able, the wise, those of ability. But the covenant
of grace is for the weak. It's for the broken. It's for
the sinful in their own eyes. It's for the disabled. It's for
the ignorant. It's for the needy. In a nutshell,
the covenant of grace is this. God in Christ has done all on
our behalf. And God the Holy Spirit is working
in us to do what He requires us to do now. Does God require
repentance? Well, sure He does. Absolutely
He does. He even says, except you repent,
you shall perish. Nobody can be saved without repentance,
can they? But listen to this. God grants
a man repentance. Without faith, we cannot be saved.
It is impossible. Except you believe that I am
He, you shall die in your sin. But if He leaves a man to himself,
he will never believe. He cannot believe and he will
not believe. So what must God do? Give us
grace to believe. We believe through grace. Grace
is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Paul
said this, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of
His good pleasure. Listen to Hebrews 13.20. I love
this. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead the
Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood
of the everlasting covenant. That's what we're talking about,
isn't it? Make you perfect in every good work to do His will,
working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight. If
you've ever done anything to please God, I'll tell you why
you did it. He worked it in you first. Now that's so, isn't it? Spurgeon
said every virtue we possess and every victory won and every
thought of holiness is His and His alone. All that we do and
the way that we live and pleasing our Lord in our lives is because
He first worked it in. He works it in and gives us grace
to work it out. We work it out as He works it
in. And that's the difference between the covenant of grace
and the covenant of works. Isaiah 26, 12, Lord, Thou wilt
ordain peace for us, for Thou also hast wrought all our works
in us. All of them? Every last one of
them. When did you begin to start weeping
over your sins? When He started working in you.
When did you look to Christ? When the Spirit of grace and
supplication moved into your heart. Why are you here this
afternoon with a desire in your heart to worship Him? Why do
you long to please your Father in Heaven? Because He's working
your works in you. And you know something? You know
what He said? Paul said this. Paul said, I'm persuaded of this.
that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until
the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. He'll perfect it in the day of
Christ. Now, brothers and sisters, that's
a covenant of grace. The covenant of works, if you're
under it, man, you're under the curse. You're absolutely under
the curse. And you think God may spare a
man that's found under that covenant of works? We'd better go back
to that whole nation, hadn't we? There's a nation that perished
as a whole. And look at the curse they've
been under ever since Titus came in in A.D. 70. God won't spare
any man. Cursed is every man, every man,
no matter who he is. Cursed if he's under that covenant
of works. And the only way to be delivered from that curse
is to look to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. our
Savior and our Lord. Thank God for all you're here
tonight, that He's given you eyes to look. And if you haven't
looked, may God give you eyes to look to Christ, to look to
Christ. That's where salvation is, in
Him.