Lesson 61
Cursings – 27:9-26
Deut. 27; in this section of the Law we have come to the great cursing
section and this is the section which we [can’t understand words] as the law of
the oath, and it’s here where we get into the seriousness of the Law and I
think that once you see what is said here in these cursings and what they
really mean, you will never again be influenced by the idea that you can be
saved by good works, because what you have before you in this chapter is one of
the most solemn chapters in this book of Deuteronomy. It is only exceeded by the gruesomeness of
the next chapter, because in the next chapter we’re going to learn how they had
to eat their children alive and how when the Jews were under the fifth cycle of
discipline or the fifth stage of discipline, things got so bad that people
would actually take young babies just as they were born and eat them. And not only that, but they would have food
in their mouths and somebody else would come along and grab the part, so if
they had a baby’s foot in their mouth or something mincing on it, someone else
would come along and grab it out of their mouth. Those are the conditions, the
extreme conditions under which
In Deut. 27 we are working with the covenant renewal. The book of Deuteronomy is a covenant, in other
words, this is Moses’ last sermon and he’s going to renew the covenant. The
covenant was made at
But in this ceremony that Moses prescribed, in verse 9, “And Moses and
the priests, the Levites, spoke unto all Israel, saying, Take heed, and
hearken, O Israel: this day thou art become the people of the LORD thy
God.” Has “become” means at this point
they actually legally enter in, once again, as the people of God. Now they always were in the sense that they
were covered by the second covenant, but now we come to the third time when
this covenant is renewed and it must be clear that they are legally His, just
as when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior it must be clear that we are the
Lord’s property. [Verse 10, “Thou shalt,
therefore, obey the voice of the LORD thy God, and do His commandments and His
statutes, which I command thee this day.”]
Beginning in verse 11 through the end of the chapter are the actual
procedures to be used in the ceremony.
First, before the ceremony begins they’re going to have to go to a set
of mountains, Ebal and Gerizim; one is a little higher than the other and on
this mountain they’re going to put an altar and that is going to be the altar
of consecration on which this ceremony takes place. Down in the middle of the valley the Levites
will stand with the
However, if you notice, every one of these cursings listed here from verses
15-26, is concerned with secret sin; it concerns something that the tendency
would be to hide this thing. You see,
throughout the Law we found something. We found that although there was a civil
law, based on this law in the sense of the government, the policeman, etc. to
enforce it,
This is very strong language and this is what the Law is and I hope by
the end of the evening you’re going to have a sense of the sharpness of the Law
so that when you read in the New Testament about the Law doesn’t save, you
won’t think Paul is just talking through his hat. Paul knew this, he was a Pharisee and he had
been exposed to the razor sharp edge of the Law and here we find this razor
sharp edge expressed through the series of cursings; the self-maledictions of
this section of Scripture.
Verse 14, “And the Levites shall speak, and say unto all the mean of
Therefore in verse 14 as the Levites lead in this ceremony, you have to
visualize, this is a ceremony which we terminate at the end of chapter 27. You have to visualize this as a whole chorus
of these Levites, shouting together this curse, and then you can hear the men
on the two sides of the mountain say “Amen.”
Verse 15, “Cursed be the man who makes any carved or melted image, an
abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and puts it
in a secret place.” Do you see the emphasis, “secret place,” these are the
things that could be done and gotten away with, nobody is going to tattle-tale
on you, nobody is going to report you to the high priest or something, these
are things that you can do in the privacy of your own home. I want you to notice something, in the Law of
Israel, they respected privacy. Nobody
crawls into your own home, but they did insist that what went on in that home
would be in alignment with the Word of God.
So that is why all these cursings are on the secret things. The word “curse” we have to understand, the
word “curse” and what it means: this is an interesting word because people
today, any time someone uses strong language they think he’s cursing. Actually
that’s not true. Curse words are words that have to do with bringing God’s name
and His wrath down upon someone. So
therefore a curse, actually this is what the original meaning meant, a real curse
in which you called down the wrath of God on someone or some being. That would be a curse.
Don’t confuse that with rather vulgar language. The two are not the same and have nothing to
do with one another. Curse is when you
call God’s wrath down upon someone, that is a curse; vulgar language is
something else but it’s not curse words.
In fact, you find vulgar language in the Bible. You’re going to see language as it exists in
the New Testament, and it was used because the apostle’s primary function was
to communicate and they weren’t afraid of using a few street words to
communicate, when it served their purpose. They weren’t promiscuous in the use
of this language but when it served their purpose they used it.
The word “curse” here is the word which means to take upon one’s self the
sentence of God upon rebellion. It’s
more than just sin. Turn back to Gen. 3,
and we’ll trace the curse through the Word of God. This is the first curse pronounced in
history; please notice against whom it was pronounced and under what
conditions. Notice also it was not
pronounced against the human race. Gen.
3:14, this is after Satan has deceived and deluded the woman into sinning and
after her husband deliberately chose to sin.
And then God comes to the woman and comes to the man, and in verse 13 begins
to pronounce His curse, but He begins in verse 14 with the serpent. He goes back to the origin of this rebellion,
“And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because you have done this, thou art
cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” Here you have a biological change actually
worked in this animal which is now the snake or the serpent in history, but
evidently in the Garden of Eden had legs.
And evidently was a real live being, probably one of the most
intelligent in the sense of brain capacity in the animal kingdom. And Satan chose to pick out this particular
animal, evidently Eve had as a pet or something, and Satan chose to indwell
this thing and he indwelt it and spoke through the serpent to Eve and Eve was
deluded, etc.
But, God, when He curses the serpent, curses both the serpent and the
one who indwelt the serpent because in verse 15 He adds, “And I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This is the protevangelium or the
first time of the gospel in the Word of God; here is where the gospel
starts. It starts right in the curse
itself. This is one of the strange
things about the curse of God; the thing that God curses often turns out to be
the means and channel of blessing. It’s
interesting that in verse 15 you have the serpent; he has deceived the woman and
through the woman he has brought into submission the human race, and yet who is
it that will give birth to the one who attains victory back over him? It’s the woman. So in 1 Tim. 2 Paul goes back to that very
thing and says yes, the woman was deceived Satan, Adam transgressed
deliberately but the woman was deceived and because the woman was deceived and
sinned in a different manner than Adam, her husband, because she sinned in a
different manner, now she, Satan, will be the one that gives birth, she will be
saved in childbearing, or saved through childbearing, which refers to the fact
that the woman will be the means by which Messiah will come into the world.
And so this curse that is pronounced upon Satan actually promises within
the curse God’s grace. So you always
have these two things united in the Word of God, the cursing and the
blessing. But nevertheless, the curse is
against Satan. You could also, as you
will see later in the book of Joshua and the angelic conflict, this curse
applies against Satan and angels, so here we have the first curse. The curse
includes Satan plus fallen angels; it does not include men. This is why the
Lord Jesus Christ is able to say in Matt. 25, hell was prepared for Satan and
his angels, not for man. Hell was not prepared for men; men arrive in hell because
they share Satan’s rebellion but hell itself was designed for Satan and for the
fallen angels. There is no salvation for
Satan and the fallen angels. In verse 15
this curse is applied, and it will last down through history.
In verse 17 the curse is against the ground, “And unto Adam he said,
Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and have eaten of the
tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is
the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
life.” And here you have the curse
applied against the ground, but please notice; it is never applied against the
human race. Men are not cursed beyond salvation. Later on we’re going to see a group of men
that were cursed, but here at this point the curse that God is placing is upon
the physical environment of man and upon the spiritual environment of man. So the entire environment is cursed. This should speak to you as Christians
because this tells you something.
What about culture? Now,
obviously we’re human beings, obviously you have an emotional pattern,
obviously you have some sense of aesthetics, obviously you have people in this
congregation who like the good things, like music, etc. This is culture, but Satan dominates the
pattern of culture. Christians aren’t anti-culture but they’re against the form
that culture takes and we live in a sinful, fallen environment. And it’s stupid for fundamental Christians to
say… here’s Joe Christian and we’re going to fill him up with a few promises
and send him out into the culture and tell him don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t
dance, don’t chew bubble gum, don’t do all the other things and that will save
you from the culture. Not on your life. You have to teach Christians how to think,
here’s their mind and ideas are flowing into that mind 24 hours a day. So therefore you’ve got to teach Christians
how to analyze and cut off human viewpoint.
Human viewpoint is the product of a cursed culture and there’s no
compromise with that object that is cursed.
The object that bears God’s curse in the Bible can never be loved. The object that bears God’s curse always has
to be rejected and if you really love the Lord, then you will hate that which
is cursed. Love always has two sides, a love
and a hate; you show me a person who has no hate and I’ll show you a person who
has no love. Love always involves
jealousy on the other side and it is not wrong, God Himself is jealous, God
Himself hates, not people, because people aren’t cursed, but He hates that
which is cursed, Satan, fallen angels, and the environment in which we
live. It is a cursed environment and you
have to constantly come back to that in Scripture, this is not a fairy story in
the early chapters of Genesis. This is
intended to give you information by which you can analyze your own attitude
toward your surrounding environment. It
is a cursed environment and therefore when the church of Jesus Christ adopts
strategies and tactics that are simply products of our environment we are
blaspheming; we are simply using the tools of our environment, they are say,
human viewpoint gimmicks, raising money and all the rest of it, putting all
sorts of programs in the churches, this is just pulling from the cursed
environment. Now you’re going to take an
object that God has laid out and specifically cursed, and you’re trying to use
it for the Lord’s work and expect His blessing.
That’s what’s short-circuiting a lot of Christian activity today.
So this is the first great time the curse occurs. Turn to
Gen. 9:25, the curse on Canaan.
Now understand first of all the problem of Noah and his family. Noah had several sons, Ham, Japheth and Shem.
These three sons set up the cultural patterns of the present day
civilization. The Japhetic line of
people that comes from Japheth had historically been the conquerors, for when
Noah speaks to Japheth, verse 27, “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall
dwell I the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” Now the blessing
that is pronounced on Japheth actually is a prophetic fore view of what the
Japhetic peoples are going to do in history.
Most of you are of the Japhetic
line; the Japhetic line, the group of peoples that we would call the Arian
race, that went into northern Europe and have largely been the conquerors, they
are, for example, the ones who moved out as the Spaniards and conquered the
western civilization, conquered the Aztecs who were Hametic. They are the
people that have conquered around the world; it’s largely been due to the Japhetic
line. Now they key characteristic
genetically is a conqueror. However,
they also have a spiritual characteristic. When won to the Lord, a Japhetic
people will tend to be those who do utmost in their evangelization, and sure
enough, from this have come most of the missionaries in our own day, from the
Japhetic line. So these people are the
great [can’t understand word] they are the ones that spread the word, they are
the ones that are the aggressors, they are the ones that are the conquerors;
this is the Japhetic line.
Then Noah had another son, Shem; out of this we get the general Arab and
the Jew and so on; we get the Middle East and isn’t it interesting that the
great religions have all come from Shem.
And that’s why it says in verse 27, where it says God shall enlarge
Japheth,” but Japheth “shall dwell in the tents of Shem,” meaning that Japheth
will get his religious sustenance out of the Semites, or out of the Semitic or
out of what we now call the Semitic peoples, the Arab and the Jews, etc. all
one race and out of this will come religion.
Out of this have come the three great major or world religions,
Christianity, Islam and Judaism. So from
this group of people you have religious roots, and these are known as the
Shemites.
You have the Hamites and the Hamites are always said, although not
explicitly in this particular section because it’s dealing with Canaan, the
Hamitics are generally a weak people, a very warm people, very warm socially
people, but as far as religion goes they tend to be very passive people and
therefore they tend to be very subject to demonic perception. The Hamitic peoples in history have been the
Egyptians, the Canaanites, have been certain other peoples around the Mediterranean
and have been largely the Asian nationalities, the Chinese, the Japanese, and
the American Indian. And if you will notice every place in history where
there’s been a confrontation you tend to have a cycle repeated. You tend to have a Hamitic people that goes
into apostasy through false religion and that is subsequently conquered and
dealt with by a Japhetic people. You can
see this pattern operate on the North American continent where the American
Indians gradually adopted polytheism, gradually adopted false religions,
heathen religions, and who conquered him?
The Japhetics. Why did the Aztec
civilization, that was one of the greatest civilizations of the western
hemisphere, suddenly collapse overnight, leaving some of the most astounding
engineering feats known to man, because again it’s the fulfillment of the fact
that the Japhetic peoples will conquer and the Hamitic peoples will always
tend, they don’t have to, but when they go into apostasy they tend to go all
the way.
Yet on the other hand, every one of these people have another characteristic
and that is the Hamite, when he is won to Jesus Christ, tends to be the one
with a very deep perception of what fellowship with God means. You can understand this when you read some of
the commentaries that have been written by the Hamitic Christians, these tend
to be the deep ones of the Christian spiritual life, etc. So they tend to have this characteristic. We
could go on and on developing world history in light of the Hamitics, the
Japhetics and the Shemites but we won’t because what we’re interested in is one
little son of Ham here, called Canaan, who is not, by the way, a Negro. Canaan here, in verse 27, is white. Ham did have some colored sons, evidently in Scripture. This is, by the way, where the races came
from.
However, Canaan was picked out in verse 25 as the one to be cursed. Now why was he the one to be cursed? Because of something that he did involving
homosexuality with his father, and this being his progeny, why we don’t have
all the facts, this is a very elliptical section of Scripture, there are many,
many things that are left out here. But
something he did incurred God’s wrath so that God said not one of your progeny
will succeed. And you as a group of
people will go down in history as the cursed people. Later on, of course, we find the fulfillment
of that. Turn to Gen. 15:16; what God is
going to do is allow the Canaanites to move into the land, allow their natural
sin natures to take over and lead them down, down, down, down to apostasy so
that they will fulfill the curse. “In
the fourth generation,” God is speaking to Abraham right at this moment and He
says Abraham, “in the fourth generation they” your children “will come hither
again,” that is from Egypt back into the land of Palestine, “they will come
back again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” Who are the Amorites? They’re Canaanites, they’re part of the
descendants of Cain and they are part of the cursed people, and so what God is
saying, look, these people are going to go on negative volition and I’m going
to let them go on negative volition, I’m going to let their sin nature crank
out all the negative volition they want to until they harden their conscience,
this is possible, you take volition, personal affections, mentality, bodily affections,
and the human spirit with conscience, God-consciousness coming over into the
human soul and you find a situation like this where a person says negative,
negative, negative, negative to his God-consciousness and he gradually builds
up callous, scar tissue here, called parousis
in Scripture and this get so thick that eventually he becomes susceptible for
he creates a vacuum into both his own soul into which human viewpoint goes; he
creates a vacuum in his human spirit and you have demonic influences. And these people go down in history as people
that dabble in spiritism, etc. That’s
what Deut. 13 and 18 say about these Amorites.
And to the Amorites God said I’m going to just wait Abraham, you stay
down in Egypt and you wait until these people get ripe for the plucking and
when they go into spiritism and when they go on negative volition, then you
come back and you destroy the people.
This is why God’s holy war was waged in the Old Testament, not against
all people, that’s not true. God ordered
the complete annihilation of all of the Canaanite peoples in fulfillment of His
curse, to demonstrate to us that His curse, the word “curse” always means
destruction; it refers to something, a judgment that God makes upon those who
go upon negative volition, and when they go on negative volition to the point
of hardening their conscience, then God must root them out from history and
utterly destroy them. We have some
knuckleheads that walk around posing as Christians that say I don’t like the
cursings in the Old Testament and I don’t like it, isn’t God horrible in the
Old Testament because He ordered the elimination of these people. That’s really
dumb to say that because if God had nor ordered the annihilation of the
Canaanites you would not be sitting where you are today. Do you know why you’re
sitting where you are today? Because God
did annihilate in part the Canaanites and as a result of this Israel was kept
healthy, and as a result of Israel at least being kept healthy for a long
enough time to develop a Canon of Scripture, from which came the Lord Jesus
Christ, etc. you are saved tonight. So
you can thank your salvation that God cursed these people and utterly destroyed
them in history. For example, if you had
cancer and a surgeon has cut it out, you don’t feel sorry for the good tissue,
“good” in quotes, that was removed from your body.
So here we have the cursing and you see the context, always in Scripture
is that cursing is upon those who rebel against God and He must curse
them. For the next cursing, turn to Gen.
12:3, and here God says something else, He says I am going to select a group of
people in history that will act as My instrumentality for bringing about My
plan in history; that nation will be Israel.
And He says in verse 3, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and I
will curse him that curses thee, and in thee shall all the families of the
earth be blessed.” God has ordained that
through the nation Israel will come Jesus Christ, you see it goes back to the
Abrahamic Covenant, we’ve got three clauses in the Abrahamic Covenant, we’ve
got real estate which is amplified by the Palestinian Covenant, we have
worldwide blessing which is actually through Jesus Christ, and we have
historical preservation amplified in the Davidic Covenant of 2 Sam. 7.
So these three clauses of the Abrahamic Covenant given here spell out
the history of the world. Any history
course that does not feature Israel as the key nation of history is wrong. Every historian who does not do this
basically does not understand history.
If you want the key to history you must understand the Abrahamic
Covenant, for this controls history. It
controls history as far away as Asia; it controls [can’t understand word] of
nations even down to our own time.
This does not excuse the Jew for his rebellion; this is not making a
favorite person out of the Jew, it’s simply saying that the Jewish people have
been selected as an instrumentality and they will be cursed, as you see in the
next chapter, so it’s not all blessing.
But God has chosen to work with them, and He says to the nation Israel,
if you disobey, I’ll curse you, but He warns in verse 3, don’t you do the
cursing. In other words, God is saying
if Israel disobeys I’ll take care of it, it’s a family matter, and I don’t need
your help in taking care of it; you let Me take care of it and I’ll spank them
but don’t you do it. So here in verse 3
He’s saying “I will curse him that curses thee.” The reason for doing this goes back to Satan
again. If God has chosen Israel as His
nation and Satan wishes to oppose God, how is he going to do it? By opposing God’s instruments, so therefore
he who opposes God basically is aligning himself with Satan and so in verse 3
shares that same curse that comes upon Satan.
Turn to Matt. 25:31, at the end of the Tribulation, at the Second Advent
the Lord Jesus Christ judges the people of the Tribulation. The Tribulation is the seven years preceding
the Second Advent of Christ. Here’s the
rapture of the Church, the Church Age ending in the rapture and then there’s a
gap of time, unknown to us, and then there will be seven years, and then the
Second Advent and the thousand year millennium.
This gap may be zero or it may be 10 or 15 years, we don’t know what it
is. There’s not a Scripture you can quote in the Bible that connects the
rapture with the beginning of the Tribulation.
The Tribulation begins when the covenant is signed but it never says the
covenant is signed the day of the rapture of the Church. So you have the seven year period, this is
the seven year Tribulation, we are speaking of what happens here, Jesus Christ
comes again, and He sits on the earth in Matt. 25:31, “When the Son of man
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit
upon the throne of His glory, [32] And before Him shall be gathered all the
Gentiles,” for the word “nation” is the word for “Gentiles,” and He shall
separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the
goats.”
Now watch this, here are the Gentiles, not the Jews, the Jews have
already been dealt with in Matt. 24.
Here now He’s talking about the Gentiles and Christ is going to divide
the Gentiles on the basis of two categories: sheep, goats, those are the two categories. How is He going to divide the Gentile
peoples? The goats go to hell and the
sheep inherit the kingdom. Now on what
basis does He do it, a very strange basis until you relate it back to the
Abrahamic Covenant?
Verse 34, “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom, prepared for you from the foundation
of the world;” this is the sheep. Verse
35, “For I was hungry, and ye gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me
drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; [36] Naked, and ye clothed me; I
was sick, and y e visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. [37] Then
shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed
you, or thirsty, and gave thee drink? [38] When saw we thee a stranger and took
thee in; or naked, and clothed thee? [39] When did we see thee sick, or in
prison, and came unto thee? [40] And the King shall answer and say unto them,
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
That verse is always used by some heart-throbbing evangelist to get you
to give to the heart fund and the cancer fund and everybody else. Those things
are all good but they just don’t happen to be applied to this section of
Scripture. This section of Scripture is
talking about the judgment at the end of the Tribulation; the sheep are those
Gentiles who are believers. How do we
know they are believers? Because they show their salvation by their attitude
toward God’s instruments. Who are God’s
instrument? Jews; during the
Tribulation, believing Jews, and these believing Jews are going to be hounded
all over the world for they’re the ones that in the seven years of the Tribulation, the great
commission is filled four times and they’re going to be involved in one of the
most fantastic programs of evangelization the world has ever seen. So these Jews are hunted all over the world,
and it’s going to be a risk. If you’re a
believer (not you because you’ll be raptured) but if you’re a believer in the
Tribulation, there’s going to be a knock at your door at night because a person
may be a believer and he’s fleeing the police and he needs a place to hide and
you’re going to have to face the decision, should I let him in because if I let
him in the police are going to get me. But then I know this person to be
identified with the Lord I love and so what’s my choice going to be? I’m going to let him hide in my house, I’m
going to give him food, I’m going to give him clothing so that tomorrow he can
go, sort of like the underground, that’s going to be operating. So the Gentile believers are involved in a
fantastic worldwide underground system during the Tribulation, hiding,
furnishing and nourishing these Jewish evangelists. This is what the Lord is talking about here,
that you saw these things; you’ve identified yourself as a believer by your
identification by these Jews that are being hounded all over the world.
Then in verse 41, “Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand”
the goats “depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels; [42] For I was hungry, and ye gave me no food; I was
thirsty, and ye gave me no drink,” and then they pull the same thing the sheep
do, in verse 45, He answers their question, and what do you mean Lord, I don’t
know what You’re talking about, “Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I
say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the lest of these, ye did it
not to me.” And these are the Gentiles
who during the Tribulation are afraid of the beast, they worship the beast,
they fall before him, the great leader of ecumenical religion and economic
unity in the Tribulation. So these Jews
that are being hounded must have support and sustenance; they get it from
believers.
Now why is it that in this case the Gentiles are judged on the basis of
their attitude toward the Jews? Because
these Jews are believing Jews in the Tribulation, commissioned by God to preach
His gospel. And since they are commissioned
therefore, the Gentile is judged. Those who curse the Jew, that is the goats,
they are cursed and that is why it says in verse 41, those goats are to “Depart
into everlasting fire, prepared for Satan and his angels,” not for them, the
everlasting fire wasn’t prepared for them, it was prepared for Satan and his
angels because everlasting fire is the fulfillment of the curse on Satan. That’s the curse of all curses, and so these
people share the curse on Satan and that is why in verse 41 Jesus puts them
there, so that they will share with him the curse that He placed originally
only on Satan and his fallen angels. Do
you see how men get themselves in a bind?
God never cursed the human race; He cursed those who have aligned
themselves with Satan.
And then in the last section in the cursings of the Bible, Rev. 22:3,
the removal of the curse, when is the curse going to be removed? Does it go on
forever? No, there will come a time when
the curse is removed, but, and there’s quite a strong “but” to it, there will
never be a time when the curse is removed for this creation. We live in the old creation, the old
universe; this entire universe must be done away with. Why?
Why can’t God take the present existing physical universe and transform
it the way He wants to? I do not know; I
only suggest that there’s a hint given in Gen. 3; the hint is, do you remember
when God cursed Satan, what did He do again? He cursed the ground. Is the curse on Satan removable? No, therefore the curse on the ground is not
removable. The curse, when God curses something it’s final, that’s the horror
of it. Once God has cursed it can never
be redone, it can never be changed, so therefore this universe, this cursed
universe, the physical environment is cursed, and so therefore in the Bible
when we come down to the last few chapters, why is it then that you have the
emphasis placed on the new universe. There’s going to be a new physical
universe, made up of men in their resurrection bodies, and the whole planet,
everything is going to be redone.
So in Rev. 33:2, “And there shall be no more curse,” and there will be
no more curse because the cursed thing has been destroyed, “curse” put in the
language of chemistry, is an irreversible reaction, it only goes one way. So once the curse goes you can’t stop it, the
only way you can do is get out of its way, and this is why salvation in the
Bible says that you have to be “in Christ” to be saved, you have to be a member
of that new creation, you have to be pulled out of the line of the locomotive
that’s coming down the railroad tracks and you’re tied to the rail. You have to get off that because the
locomotive has no brakes, you can’t stop the locomotive but you can get off the
tracks and that’s the point that we have today.
The curse is coming and it’s going to come until it encompasses the
whole physical universe; that is the tremendous fiery end to the entire
physical universe predicted in the Bible.
There’s only one way of escape and that’s to get out of the way because
you can’t stop the curse. Once in motion
it continues. And this is why God says
in Rev. 21:22 that I am making a new heaven and a new earth for you.
Now let’s go back to Deuteronomy and look at the seriousness of what
these people are calling down upon their own heads. Verse 15, “Cursed be the man who makes any
carved or melted image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of
the craftsman, and puts it in a secret place.”
Now do you understand what they have done? This isn’t some little phrase they’re
repeating. What they are doing is
calling an irreversible curse down upon their heads for the man who does these
things. Now do you see why you can’t be
saved by the Law? We’re going to see
this in Galatians when we finish this chapter but I want you to see what
they’re doing so you will understand why one cannot be saved by the Law. This is not a little trivial ministry run
that’s being recited between the two mountains here. These people are actually
calling an irreversible curse down upon themselves, and they say you have made
a molten image, then cursed are you! In
contemporary language we would say literally, to hell with you, and that’s what
they’re saying. They’re saying
essentially, they’re facing God and saying if I make this graven image then to
hell with me. That’s what they’re
saying, and an irreversible, irrevocable sentence that they’re pronouncing upon
themselves.
Again you see this in verse 16, “Cursed be he who sets light by
[dishonors] his father or his mother,” and the word “sets light” means treat
with contempt father and mother. And
here you have a breakdown of divine institution number three, the family. And you see how serious under the Law they
treated parental authority. Father and
mother weren’t to get this snobby treatment, and they said “Cursed be he” that
does this, because he has destroyed the guts right out of society. [Blank
spot] And father and mother both share
the respect, “Cursed be him that makes light,” or “treats contemptuously either
his father or his mother.” And then “all the people shall say, Amen.” And the moment they say that they sentence
themselves to doom. This is a horrible
thing when you see what they’re doing at this point. They are calling forth the
wrath of God, every sentence you can see it gets deeper and deeper and
deeper. The sentence is said, the
Levites and the choir ring out with this statement, and then from the two
mountains you hear “Amen, let it be upon us.”
It’s a horrible thing.
Verse 17, “Cursed be he who removes his neighbor’s landmark. And all the
people shall say, Amen.” In verses 17-19
you have an emphasis on the destruction of divine institution number one, which
is volition. There are four divine institutions in the Bible, volition,
marriage, family and national government.
And these are set up not for believers, they are set up for believers
and unbelievers to preserve the human race and God respects them. Verses 17-19 are all things that twist, you
can’t make a true decision if you don’t have true information, and a person who
doesn’t know where his property is has no way of defining his personal
property. So cursed be who goes out in
the night, in secret, and removes his neighbor’s landmark. Do you see the point they are getting at,
this is all secret stuff; stuff the police won’t see, things that nobody is
going to see because they are all done in privacy, and they call upon him,
“cursed be he” that does this.
Verse 18, “Cursed be he who makes the blind man to wander out of the
way. And all the people shall say, Amen.”
Cursed be he who takes a blind man and steers him out into the street,
like in New York City not so long ago, a blind man was standing on the subway
and his seeing eye dog jumped on the tracks and so we have the brilliant
spectacle of over 100 New Yorkers looking around, isn’t that cute while the
subway comes in and runs over his dog.
And then not one of those 100 people would even help the blind man up
the stairs, he had to trip his way up the steps. So it goes on. So here in verse 18 he’s saying this is easy
to do, because a blind man can’t see who you are and so “cursed be the one”
that takes advantage of the blind man.”
Verse 19, “Cursed be he who perverts the judgment due the stranger,
fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.” There’s that triple word pair that we’ve seen
again and again, the helpless people in Israelite society that had no one to
stick up for them. Again, something that you could do and get away with because
no one could report you. The little orphan,
he doesn’t have any parents to defend him; the widow has no husband to defend
her, and the stranger has no legal right in the nation to defend him. So you can pick on them and get away with it,
and yet this says “cursed be you” if you do that.
Then verses 20-23 deal with those things that are sexual, the violation
of the marriage rights and we’ve gone into this, the law of sexual rights, etc.
in Scripture. [“Cursed be he who lies
with his father’s wife, because he uncovers his father’s skirt. And all the
people shall say, Amen. [21] Cursed be he who lies with any manner of
beast. And all the people shall say,
Amen. [22] Cursed be he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father,
or the daughter of his mother. And all
the people shall say, Amen. [23] Cursed be he who lies with his
mother-in-law. And all the people shall
say, Amen.”]
Verse 24, “Cursed be he who smites his neighbor secretly. And all the
people shall say, Amen.” Again, getting
away with it, the police aren’t going to get you, nobody is going to report
you, but “Cursed be you” if you do it.
Verse 25, “Cursed be he who takes reward to slay an innocent person. And
all the people shall say, Amen.” This
refers to the civil authorities, the judges; who’s going to report the judges? Nobody is going to report the judges, so you
slip a bribe under the table and you cause the verdict to go against the
innocent person. And “cursed be the one”
that does that, let him be put in hell, this is what it’s saying if you want
the literal translation, let that one go to hell. That’s what it’s saying.
And then finally verse 26, the cursing of all cursing, “Cursed be the
one that confirms not the words of this Law to do them” the word “all” isn’t
there but it’s strongly implied, “that confirms not all the words of this Law
to do them. And all the people shall
say, Amen.” Now do you see what they’ve
done? In the last curse they’ve cursed
every one of themselves because there’s not one man who can say that I have
personally confirmed all the words of this Law.
Now you might argue that these people weren’t really understanding what
they were doing, I don’t think they were, quite frankly, they weren’t
understanding at this point in history what they were doing on themselves. Some of them might, but I doubt the majority
of those people, when they were doing this, really understood what they were
doing. But nevertheless, look at what
they did here in verse 26, and Paul is going to build on this over in Galatians,
“Cursed,” or to hell, let him go to hell, who has not obeyed perfectly the
whole words of this Law.
Now do you see why that one cannot be saved by keeping the Law? Let me take you to the New Testament and
let’s study the Law a minute. We’ll
conclude by looking at the Law very carefully.
This is a good time to do some review on the Law, so you’ll understand
how this word is used and what it means in the New Testament. I’d like to give nine propositions on the
Law.
The first proposition is that the Law was the revelation of God’s absolute
righteousness, Rom. 3:19, “Now we know that whatever things the law saith, it
says to them who are under the law,” who are those under the Law? You now know who’s under the Law, the people
that are under the Law are those in Deut. 27 who have taken the Law down upon
themselves and say cursed be the one who does not confirm all the words of this
Law. Those are the people under the Law,
and what does Paul say? He says the words
of the Law are directed “to them that are under the Law, that every mouth may
be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God.” In other words, Paul argues this. The Law is a revelation of God’s absolute
righteousness. And when you look at the
Law and you realize what it’s saying, this is not just kind of a little list
that your mother and father give to you and say good girls do this or good boys
do this and bad girls don’t do this, etc.
That’s not what the Law is. The Law is not just a set or moral
standards; the Law is a set of legal principles by which you are condemned. And this is why it says “cursed be the one”
that doesn’t do this. You don’t get away
with it; there is no getting away from any breaking of the Law. So this is why the Law is a revelation of
God’s absolute righteousness.
I want you to see something else, there is a principle of teaching and
this really should follow when you teach Sunday school, when you teach anybody,
when you talk to them about the Lord or anything else, don’t you see there’s a
logical progression in the Bible. Which
came first, the Law of Jesus Christ? The
Law. Why did God give the Law before
Jesus Christ came? Because you can’t
appreciate the work of Christ unless you see God’s absolute righteousness; you
will not appreciate the cross, you can’t possibly appreciate the cross of
Christ unless you realize what He bore on the cross. Therefore before you get flippant with the
word Jesus Christ, just remember, in history it took 1400 years for people to
learn God’s righteousness before they had a Savior act out in history. Now do you see what’s wrong with Sunday
School literature, for 3 or 4 years old they’re talking about oh, let’s love
Jesus, He was a good man so we’ll all be good.
What a bunch of malarkey that is, little kids can’t understand who Jesus
is; this is the fallacy of this business we’re going to evangelize three year
olds. They are not going to understand
this unless they first understand absolute righteousness and understand guilt,
sin and the Law and understand that God has an uncompromising character, and
when you see that, then you’re ready to understand about Christ a little
bit. But this business of presenting
Christ without the Law, standards and so on is bologna because you’re not
presenting the right Jesus Christ is the problem.
The second thing about the Law, not only was it a revelation of God’s
righteousness, but it was a definition of His love. It’s a definition of love; you say how’s
that? We went through Deut. 6:4, John
14:21, what Jesus said, “If you love Me,” what are you going to do, “keep My
commandments.” What did Deut. 6
say? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, with all thy soul.”
Love of God means that you respond to His character. If the Law is a revelation of His
righteousness, and I love Him, what do I love?
His righteousness. Now do you see
why the Law? It defines love because love is my response to what I know of God
and if I look upon God and I see His righteousness, and I really love Him, then
I’ll love that righteousness. Now that’s
true love, that’s what love is. This
jazz that you get today that’s a sentimental thing, it really isn’t, there’s
nothing sentimental in many aspects about love.
True, emotions accompany love but if you see this you’ll never be swept
off your feet by this substitute for love that goes around today. Love is a response to someone else’s
character and you have to know the other person in order to love them. And this is why this business of oh, I’m so
in love, etc. You don’t fall in love; you grow in love! You have to, it took Israel 14 centuries of
growth before they really loved the Lord, those who were saved and ready for
the Messiah; fourteen centuries of training, training, training, before they
learned to love God.
The third thing, not only was the Law a revelation of God’s
righteousness, not only was it a definition of His love because it’s a response
to what He is, but the third thing that the Law is that it was given in four
parts. You must understand the four
parts or else you’ll be confused as to what applies to us today and what part
doesn’t. The four parts of the Law were
the Ten Words or what we call the Ten Commandments. The last three are different; that first
section, the first of the four sections of the Law was given verbally so if you
had been there with a tape recorder you could have taped the voice of God. Wouldn’t that be exciting, to tape the voice
of God. A million people stood at the
mountain and heard those words; Moses didn’t have a little secret conference up
at the top and say hey God, whisper in my ear and I’ll write it down. It was a
public proclamation of the Ten Words, and what did the people do? Remember what happened in Deut. 5 when the
people heard the voice of God, they got shook and said hey Moses, you go up there
and take care of the business, we don’t want to go near that place. They got
scared. Do you know what they were
scared of? God’s righteousness.
So the last three parts of the Law were given by mediatorship of
Moses. There were statutes, judgments
and commandments in the Hebrew. Statutes mean those things that were addressed
to one’s conscience; things that could be done in secret, things that nobody
would beat you over the head if you didn’t do them. Judgments were things like criminal law and civil
law, where somebody would beat you over the head if you did them. Commandments were simply once for all things,
like go in and when you get there set up an altar for me or something; that was
what commandments meant. So these were
the four parts of the Law.
The fourth thing about the Law and I think now you are going to
appreciate this fourth thing. You might
not have appreciated it before but having had the background in Deuteronomy 27
I think you’ll appreciate this fourth statement. The Law, by itself, cannot save but only
curse. There is no saving power in the
Law; the Law can only bring wrath down upon your head. That’s the only accomplishment of the Law. You say where do you get that from? Romans 3:19, look at it again, “Now we know
that whatever things the Law says, it says to them who are under the law,” why,
purpose, “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty
before God,” that’s the purpose of the Law, condemn, condemn, condemn.
Go to James 2:10 and now you understand why James says what He does,
“For whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point, he is
guilty of all.” That should remove
forever any self-righteousness that you have.
If you’re one of these proud people that says I’m so law and ethical and
you pick up the morning newspaper and you read about somebody that got bumped
over the head with a chain or something, or some store got pilfered or somebody
got raped or something, oh, well I’d never would do that, well I can’t imagine anyone
doing that, and you look down your long little pointed nose at somebody because
they goofed up. What does this verse
tell you? You break one of those laws
and you have broken the Law and you’re just as guilty as everyone else. That’s
what it’s saying.
You see God operates on a system; that’s why we use +R and –R, you can
go by the number system, you can have a positive number, plus 1, plus 2, minus
1, minus 2, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a minus 25 or a minus 2 you still
fall in the category of negative numbers.
And it doesn’t matter whether you’re plus 1 or plus 300, it doesn’t make
any difference; you’re still in the category of plus numbers. There’s an absolute division between plus and
minus numbers. That’s why we use +R to
refer to God’s absolute righteousness; –R to refer to our righteousness. Although we have many people that you’d say
they were very great sinners, pick somebody that you think is a great sinner, a
real clod, and say you give him a value of -250, and then you think of
yourself, well I’m –˝ and there you, so great, but you’re still a negative
number, and you still therefore fall in the classification of James 2:10,
whosoever has transgressed once is guilty of all of the Law.
We have another verse on this just so you get the point. Gal. 3:10, I want you to see this because
here is where Paul is building from the Old Testament; he expected his
congregation to know the Old Testament so that he could use the Old Testament
for illustrations. I realize it’s not
easy to sit through class after class listening to the law codes of
Deuteronomy. But the reason why I’m
doing it is so that you will have a foundation and a basis to understand the
New Testament. “For as many as are of
the works of the Law are under the curse, for it is written,” now guess where
Paul got the quote, “Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things which
are written in the book of Law to do this.”
Where do you suppose he got that?
Did he make that up? No he
didn’t, that’s the last verse of Deut. 27 duly modified through the Septuagint,
etc. That’s where Paul got that from; he
is quoting an Old Testament Scripture and he is saying look, you Galatians, you
think you can be saved by being good, you think you can be saved by keeping
your morals—bologna. Don’t you read the
law, haven’t you ever read Deut. 27, don’t you know these things. You see, he’s just cutting them off by going
back to the Law. So the fourth statement
is that the Law itself cannot save, it can only curse. Yet we have people constantly trying to get
under the Law again. People that are
trying to get under the Law just don’t know the Law, that’s the problem.
The fifth statement about the Law is Old Testament saints were saved by
grace outside of the Law. Old Testament
saints, David, Abraham, Moses, etc. these great men of God were saved but they
weren’t saved because they kept the Law.
They were saved by God’s grace apart from the Law! You say where to we get that? We get that in a number of passages, and let
me give you a little chart that will help you on this. Someone asked me how were people in the Old
Testament saved? How are people in any
generation saved? Just remember a little
chart; I am indebted to Dr. Ryrie for this chart, author of Dispensationalism Today. Think of a chart, first row put basis, basis
of salvation; second one you put the means of salvation, and the third row you
put the object of faith, and the next one you put the content of faith. Draw two columns, on one column put Old
Testament, and on the other column New Testament. Let’s look at this.
How were people saved in the Old Testament? Let’s go down through the
chart. First, what was the basis of
salvation in both Old Testament and New Testament alike? The basis was the shed blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ, Rom. 3:25; other verses will be found in Isaiah 53 and Heb. 9,
but in Rom. 3:25 we have it exclusively stated about the Lord Jesus Christ
dying on the cross for both Old Testament and New Testament saints, and it
says: “Whom God” who’s that? Jesus Christ, on the cross, “Whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood,” it should read “whom
God has set forth to be a propitiation in His blood through faith, to declare
His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the
forbearance of God. [26] To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness,
that He might be just, and the justifier of Him who believes in Jesus.” The “remission of sins that are past” in
verse 25 refers to the Old Testament saints; they were saved, defacto salvation, they were saved but
not de jure, they weren’t saved
legally.
In other words, it was all promissory in the sense that if Christ had
goofed up, just suppose, suppose just once in humanity Christ goofed, do you
realize every Old Testament saint would have lost their salvation at that
point. You think your life is under pressure, you think you’ve got a lot of
strain; imagine what the Lord Jesus Christ felt. People’s salvation hung on what that man
would do and how He would obey the Law.
If He transgressed at one point it would have disqualified Him as a
perfect sacrifice and bang, that would have been it. So the Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross
is the legal basis for Old Testament saint salvation, New Testament saint salvation. Old Testament saints in that God in the
future beyond their day would take care of the problem, all they had to do was
trust that He would, that’s all they had to do.
Yahweh, in your grace I believe that you’re going to remove my sins, and
that was basically their trust, they know how He would do it but someday He
would do it. So it’s easy to remember,
the basis of salvation is the same.
Now the means of salvation: how did the Old Testament appropriate the
salvation? The same way you do, by faith,
they appropriated salvation by faith. Rom. 4:1-12, “What shall we say, then,
that Abraham, our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? [2] For if
Abraham were justified by works, he hath something of which to glory, but not
before God. [3] For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was
counted unto him for righteousness. [4] Now to him that works is the reward not
reckoned of grace, but of debt. [5] But to him that works not, but believes on
him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Then he gives David as an example in verse 6,
“Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputes
righteousness apart from works,” so how are Old Testament saints saved? He’s got a beautiful proof, beautiful proof
in this book. What he does is simply say
now look, was Abraham under the Law when He was saved or not? Was he circumcised? These people always want to be circumcised,
that’s part of the Law, you weren’t saved until you were; like some people say
you’re not saved until you’re baptized—same old argument. Here what he’s doing is saying listen, when
was Abraham circumcised, before or after he believed? He was circumcised after he believed,
therefore does circumcise save? No, circumcision doesn’t save; neither does
baptism save. So here are the means of
salvation—faith.
What was the object of faith? The
object of faith was the Lord Jesus Christ, Isaiah 53, Isaiah 9, in that the
Messiah coming, they didn’t know exactly how He would but they believed that
when the Messiah came He would somehow solve the problem. You have an advantage. Do you know that everyone here knows more
than any saint in the Old Testament because you know what happened; they
didn’t. But they did know that Messiah
would take care of it somehow, God would take care of it, so you’d just say God
the Son was the object of faith both in the Old and New Testament. Now the only thing that’s different between
the Old Testament way of salvation and the New Testament way of salvation is
what we know. Here they had a little
knowledge; here we’ve got a lot of knowledge, that’s the difference, but the
system of salvation is exactly the same.
They didn’t know as much as we do; they had the gospel preached to them
through the Tabernacle. You can preach
the entire gospel out of the Tabernacle.
And then we have various typologies, etc. in the Old Testament. That’s how they knew; they knew information,
they knew enough to be saved, and that is the story of Old Testament salvation.
But notice, where in the chart do you see the word L-a-w? You don’t see it because the Law had nothing
to do with their salvation; the Law has to do with a behavior pattern but had
nothing to do with salvation, nothing, absolutely nothing whatever to do with
salvation, Ten Commandments included, nothing to do with it.
The sixth thing we want to say about the Law, the sixth principle under
the Law is that the Law, we worked with salvation now it’s logical to come to
the next thing. Law had no power to help
one obey it. So you see, now we’ve shown
you the fact that the Law doesn’t save, people were saved by grace. Neither did the Law empower to live the
Christian life or whatever it’s called under the Old Testament economy. You had no way of living the spiritual life
by means of the Law. Where do I get that?
Rom. 8:3, so in case that you are under the delusion that you have to
live the Christian life in the energy of the flesh and you’ve been frustrated
and you fail, etc. and some of you don’t want to become Christians because
you’re afraid you can’t life the life, etc., just forget it, you don’t have to
worry about that. You don’t hang away
from the gospel because you’re afraid you can’t life the Christian life. God
knows that! After all, who made you
anyway; He knows you better than you know yourself and He knows you can’t keep
it, He knows I can’t, so He’s not so dumb to leave you without provision.
Rom. 8:3, “For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through
the flesh, God sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for
sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” In the
context we could relate that to the Christian life. The point was that the Law was weak because
it depended upon your obedience. The Law
itself was just a code, here we have something scratched on a plate, there it
is, that’s the Law. Big deal, what’s that going t do, that just tells me what
I’m supposed to do, it doesn’t give me energy or power to do it. I’m just looking at a piece of stone with
writing on it. Now that isn’t going to give me any power to live the Christian
life. It’s very obvious once you see the
point. The Law could not give you power
to keep it, so therefore the seventh point.
Where did the empowerment come from to live the spiritual life under the
Old Testament economy? Gal. 3:17,
there’s a principle here in Galatians, “And this I say, that the covenant that
was confirmed before by God in Christ, the Law, which was fur hundred and
thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of no
effect.” The covenant refers to the
Abrahamic Covenant, Law came 430 years after the Abrahamic Covenant, here’s the
Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law could not counterbalance and neutralize the
Abrahamic Covenant. All right, that
tells you something; that tells you that if I am living under the Mosaic Law I
have a right to have the spiritual power that was given to Abraham. How did Abraham live his life? God the Holy Spirit obviously helped
Abraham. He lived a life of faith, Heb.
11 tells you this, Rom. 4 tells you this; Abraham lived, not just was saved,
but he lived his life by faith, appropriating the grace of God, and that is how
the Old Testament saint was able to live his life; God worked in his life like
He’ll work in your life, and He didn’t leave people just with a bare code and
say you be a good boy now, I’m going to go away and I’ll come back in 60 years
and hope you did a good job. That’s the way Christians think, they think
there’s two points where God touches them; He touches them at the point of
salvation, He touches them at the point of death, and He takes a long vacation
in between. God is moment by moment
available to you and the empowerment for the Christian life will come from the
indwelling Holy Spirit.
Conclusion to this point of the Law, the Law neither provided salvation
nor gave spiritual power, it was to reveal God’s righteousness and that’s
all. The Law did not give salvation, the
Law did not give spirituality; the Law just gave a bare revelation of the
righteousness of God.
Turn to Romans and apply this to our lives so we don’t think this is
just for the Old Testament saint. Let’s
see if we can get a principle for our own lives. There are three important chapters in Romans;
chapter 6, 7 and 8. Chapter 6 of Romans
deals with our position in Christ; chapter 7 deals with the frustration of
trying to live the life as the Old Testament saints tried to under the Law
without relying on grace. If you look at
the end of Romans 7, probably you’ve said this more than once, but just look at
it. Here’s a man who was a believer,
trying to live the Christian life without the indwelling Holy Spirit doing His
work. [19] “For the good which I would
do, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do,” and you know who is
saying this—the infallible apostle Paul, so you think you’re a special Lone
Ranger out of the Christians because you have a little problem, what do you
think Paul has?
What’s he telling you right here, he has the same problem you do, so
don’t feel bad. [20] “Now if, then, I do
that which I would not, it is no more I that do it, but the sin nature,” sin,
singular, verse 20, “that dwells in me. [21] I find then a law” or a mode of
operation literally here, “that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
[22] For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; [23] But I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me
into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. [24] Oh, wretched man
that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Have you ever had that feeling; Paul had it
years before you even popped out. So
here you are, Paul was frustrated, Romans 7, how is he going to solve the
problem? He knows the will of God, just
like the Old Testament saints, think of the Law again, the Law is out here,
outside of my life, outside of my soul, it tells me hey, I want you to do this,
but I find I can’t do this, I don’t like to do it; the minute God tells me something
to do I don’t want to do it. You’ve had
that experience, and if not, wait till your kids try it. Don’t want to do it, you do it, and that’s
just the sin nature, it’s just normal, you have one.
So in Romans 8 Paul gives the solution and the solution is the
indwelling Holy Spirit. Verse 1, “There
is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” There’s
the top circle again, you get in the top circle at the point of salvation, “in
Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. [2] For the
law of the Spirit” or the working you might say, “the working of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” This means that when you were saved God gave
you the assets by which you can accomplish the will of God, not two years from
now but right now. And it’s not far off,
it’s right present with you. And your
only problem is to recognize that God is giving you this. How do you do that? 1 John 1:9, and do you know why 1 John 1:9 is
the basis for it? Because you have to walk in the Christian life by faith and
you can’t believe when your conscience is saying no, no, no, no, no, no, so 1
John 1:9 is to clear your conscience.
“The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin,” when you conscience is
cleansed, 1 Cor. 8, 1 Cor. 10, Rom. 14, show us that you can live by faith, you
can trust God and you can move out, and He takes care of the sin nature, you
just have to follow what He tells you.
This is possible, it’s not some ethereal experience where you walk on
cloud 9, it’s a normal experience that God has ordained for the Christian. It means that
you’re willing to get with the plan of God for your life and it means
sometimes, let me give you one little warning because some of you say well I used 1 John 1:9 and it
didn’t work.
There may come a time when you’ve got some sin in your life and it’s not
immediately obvious, so just think of your life as a pie, made up of sections
and sometimes… I find this helps some people to visualize this, if before you
use 1 John 1:9 you’ll think of your life as a pie with various sections, the
details of life, relationship with your husband or wife, you say that’s a big
section, then you have your social relationship, then some other relationship,
your job, you have health and concerns about your health, etc. you have all
these details of life; think of your life as a pie. And then ask God the Holy Spirit to show you,
is there something that’s screwed up in one of these areas. Just ask Him to bring it to your awareness,
to your conscience, is there something fouled up in this area where I am not
yielded to Your will, I am not with it, I’m not on positive signals. See you can be on positive or negative
volition at any point in time, but as you move through points in time, say
here’s 9:00 o’clock and 10:00 o’clock.
At 9:00 you may be thinking in this area, you’re on positive volition,
but then you go home to your wife or husband and bang, negative volition. What’s happened, because now the center of
your attention has shifted into another area of you life and boom, that’s your
hang-up, right there. And that’s what
God is calling you to confess in 1 John 1:9.
So 1 John 1:9 may not work because God is trying to teach you to remove
that obstacle and sometimes it takes a little time and consideration. It means that you have to turn the TV set off
for five minutes so you can think. At
that point then you have to conduct a little self-examination. You don’t do
this every day but I’m saying that if you have spiritual problems this is
first-aid procedure for you to recover from it.
You’re just going to have to go through every area. This is what sometimes is necessary; so don’t
knock 1 John 1:9 and say it doesn’t work, it’s because you haven’t used it is
the reason why it doesn’t work.