January 30, 2014 - Thursday

Start Time: 5:43 A.M.

End Time: 8:40 A.M.

Title: Curses for Disobedience
Scripture: Deuteronomy 28:15 – 68

God’s Message / God’s Promise / God’s Commands:

→ However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

NOTES:

Ø God’s heart is for His people to obey!  The purpose of all the curses written on the same chapter where the blessings of obedience is written shows that our Lord God wants us to obey.  Chapter 28 started with all the blessings that comes with obedience that will encourage and inspire us to follow the Lord’s words; the next verses then shows the impact of disobeying but even with all the curses after the blessings, the intention is for us to have no reason to disobey.  That our hearts will always be set to follow because not only does God inspires and encourages us to choose obedience, HE warns us and reminds us of the result of disobedience and no one wants to have what disobedience has for its followers.  Ultimately, disobedience = curse.  When we disobey, the natural impact is that curse follows us wherever we go and anything we do, it is devoured by the curse both internally and externally.  So why even choose to disobey?  This is the main question God wants us to think…why even consider disobeying when we know what it has for us.  So choose obedience!

→ The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.

NOTES:

Ø God does not want to curse us!  Our disobedience puts God in a position where He must do what He doesn’t want to do to His people – curse them!  The above passage mentions “Lord” – which in the old testament is used as a substitute to  “YHWH” (tetragrammaton – meaning four letters – and was referred to the Lord’s name in early Judaism).  Note that YHWH is often connected with God’s revelation to Moses in Exodus of who He is (God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM’ – God is the self-existent One, I AM, who is worthy of all worship and honor).  So the Lord is literally telling us that He, the Lord, the self existent One, YHWH, will send us curses when we disobey, including confusion and rebuke in everything our hands do, until we are destroyed and become ruined because of the evil in us.  He will need to plague us with diseases and strike us with it.  So these curses are placed on our bodies (internal – diseases and sicknesses) and what our hands do (work) and it will go with us wherever we are, in the country or in the city.

→ The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.

NOTES:

Ø God’s heart is broken whenever we disobey for He will have to allow defeat to consume us and failures to take over our lives!  God is a God of life and sovereignty!  He is all-powerful, almighty, omnipotent, omniscient, self existent, and He will have to step aside and turn His back to His own people and allow defeat, failures, curses, negativity to take over them.  This is heart-breaking for a God who loves His people so much!  Yet, His words will stand and will not be broken!  So YHWH is saying to us… “Obey Me! For I want to bless you and not curse you.” – What a God we serve!  Amazing, truly amazing!  God is saying to us let me bless You so choose obedience!

→You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. The sights you see will drive you mad. The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.

NOTES:

Ø God, despite of His love for us, will do as He says and will need to permit everything He has given for us be taken away from our hands by His own enemy! He will have to restrict Himself from His passionate desire to save and protect us.  He will have to contain His yearning of delivering us and put a stop to His power to take care, defend, and guard us from His own enemy.  So again, YHWH is saying…”Obey me for I desire to bless you more than you want to.” – Choose obedience today!

→The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the Lord will drive you.

NOTES:

Ø God, who wants nothing but to bring His people together, will have to separate and drive them to a land that is not their home!  God will have to make His people Homeless and foreigners to lands that are not their own when His people disobey and this is not what God wants to do.  Note that God is in covenant with us and we are to do our part with His help so He can do what He has promised.  (Note that God does not want this for His people yet He has planned everything that in the end, He will be able to unite us back.  Why?  Because previous learning I had confirmed that God has a big heart for the homeless and foreigners and He hears their cries – which in the end leads us back to Him.  Praise God!)  

→You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.  The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.

NOTES:

Ø God, who promises abundance prosperity to us, will have to shut down His Storehouse of blessings for us and watch His people scrape for food and beg for scraps!  The God who provides will have to see His people plead for crumbs to eat.  God will watch His people get into captivity and become slaves of their enemies.  The foreigners who live among them will rise above them and become the head while His people becomes the bottom (But in all these, God sees what is ahead and sees the future cries of His people and He awaits for the right time to deliver them once again! Hallelujah!)

→ All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever.  Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

NOTES:

Ø God, who clothed you, will have to allow the enemy to strip you naked and will have to watch you serve other gods!  God’s heart will be crushed to see His beloved in humiliation, in hunger and thirst, but most of all, God’s heart will be squashed and pounded down to see His people serving other gods in poverty.  So today God is saying, “Serve me in joy and gladness in the abundance of my prosperity.  Choose obedience!”  Thank You Lord for Your heart is for us to obey! 

→The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you.

NOTES:

Ø God, because of His love for us, will have to allow our enemies to swoop us down and devour everything we own and leave us with nothing!  All these will have to happen so we will remember and will know the signs and wonders that God told us, which will lead us to humble ourselves and repent and call upon the Name of our One and True God!  What an Amazing God we serve!  Truly, undeniably, the greatest and no other Lord and God!  The True and Only Lord of all!

→Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter  the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

NOTES:

Ø God will then have to watch His people fight against each other and consume them with evil when we decide to disobey continuously to our Lord!  Our disobedience pulverizes God’s heart to see evil eating us up alive.  Our Lord who is the God of love, will have to witness His people thinking and acting against one another and slowly losing the power of love in their hearts.  Disobedience hides the truth and power of love!

→ If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.

NOTES:

Ø God will turn His love against you because of your disobedience and when it happens, though it pains Him, He will be pleased to destroy you because of the evil in you!  God is abounding in love and slow to anger but when we decide to choose disobedience despite of His warnings, His love, His goodness, etc.  We choose our fate, which leads to destruction.  God even with His everlasting love, still managed to pour out His grace and love and would choose to destroy and eliminate us in the face of the earth rather than see us become totally evil and become His ultimate nemesis!  He would be pleased to uproot us from the earth rather than see us become His adversary because He knows that our fate will be worse than death when we battle against Him.  Again, His mercy and grace just continue to flows even in our choice to disobey Him!  Who else is there like Him?  None!  Only our Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, Almighty God!  Thank You!

→Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!” and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.

NOTES:

Ø God will then allow the past to become our present – meaning, the tragedies in our lives in the past will be repeated again and ultimately allow us to serve other gods!  The ultimate curse is for us to serve other gods and repeat the mistakes we did.  Why?  Serving other gods is the ultimate curse, not because it hurts the Lord, but because these are false gods.  We will be calling upon gods who cannot hear, gods who cannot speak, gods that cannot do anything.  We become insane for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  Our life will become a cycle of mistakes and it becomes a trap that will bring us deeper to a hopeless life.  No love, no hope, no faith.  Everything becomes a repeat of failures.  There’s just nothing to believe in, nothing to look forward to, and no one to love… This sounds very familiar in our generation…God is saying, “obey me so you will never have to face lost again!  Choose obedience so You will have love, faith and hope!”

Prayer:

Lord Jesus, I am speechless and amazed of Your great love, grace and favor to Your people.  In everything, Your heart is seen that is for us!  Lord I am truly feeling breathless of Your love and sovereignty!  God, You are amazing!  Truly none other!  Even in times that You speak about curses for disobedience, Your love just overflows!  Jesus, thank You!  Holy Spirit, I am grateful and continuously dumbfounded with Your power, Your Grace and how You set things right!  Despite of how many times we crushed Your heart, it remains unbreakable for us!  No matter how many times I stepped on Your love and pulverized it again and again every time I disobey, Your love remains whole and solid and unchanging for me!  Lord I am truly moved and touched by Your greatness and goodness.  Words are just not enough to speak it out and describe it.  Lord know that today I choose to obey.  I choose obedience because I want You to bless me and to love me more and just pour out Your abundant prosperity in my life!  Lord I want You to do what You want and not put You in a position to do what You don’t want to do to me.  Lord thank You for the gift of choice and thank You for helping me choose!  Holy Spirit, help me to choose obedience every day, especially when I struggle to do the right thing.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen!