(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Man, Deuteronomy chapter number 11 is the last chapter in this section in Deuteronomy because these chapters that we've been going over the last few weeks have really just been generalized admonitions to worship the Lord, to keep His commandments, just explaining to them philosophically about what it's going to be like to go into the Promised Land and what they need to do to succeed and how important it is to cleave to the Lord their God and not to worship these other false gods and so forth. Starting in chapter 12 and forward, we're going to get into a lot more specific commandments, the nitty-gritty of God's laws. But in chapter 11, we're still mainly speaking in generalities, kind of going over some of the history of the wanderings in the wilderness and the fact that the children of Israel need to take God's chastisement seriously and that they need to be very careful to follow God's commandments. So it starts out in verse number 1 with the statement, therefore, thou shalt love the Lord thy God and keep His charge and His statutes and His judgments and His commandments always. First I want to focus on that part, thou shalt love the Lord thy God. A lot of people have this attitude that love is somehow something that they can't control, that they, you know, there are just certain things that they like and certain things that they don't like and, you know, I love this and I don't love that and that's just the way that I am. But yet the Bible over and over again commands us to love certain things and to hate certain things. And here the Bible is commanding us, of course, to love the Lord God. In fact, Jesus Christ identified this as the greatest commandment in the Bible is to love the Lord your God. He's telling us to do it. You know, the Bible also tells husbands to love their wives. The Bible also tells wives to love their husbands and to love their children. And it is possible for us to change our attitude about things and about people and love what and whom God tells us to love and not to love those things that we should not love and that is something that we have control over. Now obviously our flesh is wired a certain way, right? We all were born into this world with certain tendencies, certain proclivities. You know, it's interesting when a baby is born into this world, no one has to explain to it how to nurse from its mother's breast. It just comes out of the womb and just instantly knows what to do. How does it know that? Who taught it that behavior? That behavior is hardwired into that baby from birth. It's called instinct, right? Well, here's the thing. This sinful flesh that we occupy is not just hardwired to nurse at our mother's breast the moment that we're born. Guess what? It's also hardwired to do a lot of behaviors that are sinful, right? We have a sinful nature and our bodies, our sinful flesh are literally programmed or wired toward bad behavior in a lot of areas and a lot of people would just say, well, this is just who I am. I'm just kind of doing what comes naturally to me, but God has told us in his word that we need to walk in the spirit and transcend the flesh, right? Not just say, well, this is just how I am. No, we're to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts and put on the new man, walk in the spirit. You see, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome those sinful tendencies even if they are hardwired into our flesh. Now, obviously, no one is ever going to be perfect this side of heaven. As long as we're in this body, there's going to be a war going on between that sinful flesh and between our saved spirit and the flesh lusted against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would, obviously, we're never going to completely eradicate the flesh until we've gone to be with the Lord in heaven. But while we're on this earth, though, we do have that power on any given day or in any given moment to put off the old man, to mortify the flesh, to put on the new man, and we can set our affection on things above and not on things on the earth. And I'd say, well, this is how I am. I just, you know, I just love to drink. That's just how I am. Well, change, right? The very word repent means change, and so it must be possible for us to change these things about ourself. Now, the unsaved person, it's not possible, necessarily, for them to change because of the fact that they don't have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, they don't have the new man, they're just the flesh, and so they can reform themselves temporarily, but as far as a real, true, core change, you know, it's not going to happen, okay? And thankfully, God does not require us to be sinless, to be saved. Thankfully, God does not require us to turn from our sins to be saved. God just simply requires that we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and what does that mean? What He already did for us on the cross, His death, burial, and resurrection. If we put our faith and trust in what Christ has already done for us on the cross, we shall be saved. And then once we're saved, not only do we get to go to heaven when we die, we get this added benefit of having the Holy Spirit take up residence within our heart. And not only that, God actually transforms us when it comes to our spirit, He transforms us into a brand new creature. But guess what? The old creature is still there. And make no mistake, when you got saved, your old man did not change at all. Your flesh is exactly the same flesh from before you got saved. It's got all those same temptations, the same tendencies. Some of these temptations and tendencies are learned behaviors. Maybe our parents committed certain sins and then we picked that up from them, or society taught us certain sins. But some of those are literally hardwired into our DNA. And they're just the flesh, the hand that we've been dealt when it comes to our sinful flesh. And you know what? We have to put on the new man and not just hide behind an excuse of biology for why we're doing the things that we do. Because let's face it, a lot of our sins are biology motivated. I mean, think about it. You know, a sin like gluttony, you know, it's our body that's screaming at us to just shove more food down our throats. And then for other people, their body's screaming at them to drink alcohol, screaming at them to smoke that cigarette or to take drugs or whatever, right? And certain people have a greater tendency to these things than others. And some of it even has to do with biology, right? If you think about, for example, the Native Americans really struggle with alcohol. And why? You know, it has to do with their genes. It has to do with the fact that, you know, probably because they were separated from European culture for so long, they weren't really eating and drinking a lot of sugars and they weren't drinking a lot of wine and things like that. And so their bodies aren't really used to it. And then basically the white man comes over and he's got a bunch of sugar and he's got a bunch of booze and their bodies just weren't really prepared to handle that. And so that could be a tendency. You know, that just means that if you're a Native American tonight, you need to just not touch alcohol with a 10-foot pole, because that's a thing that your people tend to struggle with, right? Now, none of us should be drinking alcohol, but there are certain things. Some people, alcohol is going to be a really big struggle for them, no matter what race they are, but just, you know, it's just a struggle more for some than others. But you know, if something runs in your family, if you have family members who are alcoholics, family members who are addicted to drugs, family members who are involved in this or that, you know, beware of those things. But that's all under the canopy of the flesh. We can transcend that. We can put on the new man. We can walk in the spirit. Don't ever let that be an excuse of, well, this is just how I am. No, you need to love the things that are above. You need to set your affection on things above and you need to hate sin, okay? And so thou shalt love the Lord thy God. You say, well, you know, how do I control how I feel? You just do figure it out and you better figure it out fast because our God is a consuming fire. So you better figure out how to love the Lord your God because I, apparently there's a way to do it. Now I love God, you know, so I, you know, it's hard for me to imagine not loving God because I grew up in a Christian home. I was blessed and privileged to be raised as a Christian. I got saved at a young age and so I love the Lord God, but you know, I need to love him even more next week than I love him this week, right? We can all grow in our love for God and love him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Therefore thou shalt love, that's a commandment, right? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and keep his charge and his statutes and his judgments and his commandments. You see, keeping God's commandments and loving God go hand in hand. Even in the New Testament, the Bible says this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous. And so God wants us to show our love for him by keeping his commandments. Again, keeping commandments has nothing to do with salvation, it has to do with showing our love for God. It says in verse 2, I know ye this day for speak not with your children which have not known and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his stretched out arm. Now in verse 1, we have this command to love, thou shalt love. Then in verse 2, we have another command, know, know ye this day. And it feels like something kind of missing when you're reading this in English just because we don't typically talk that way, right? We don't usually just say no, because we would say like know this or know something. So God's just like, no, today, know it, all right? See I have to add it to it for it to make sense to me like know this day. And then he says, because I'm talking to you that should know, right? So he says, know this day for I speak not with your children which have not known. I'm talking to some people that have been around and should know these things, he's saying. I'm not talking to your children which have not known and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and stretched out arm. Then he's going to bring up some examples of God's chastisement. His miracles and his acts which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh king of Egypt and unto all his land and what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you and how the Lord had destroyed them unto this day. He's saying God destroyed Pharaoh and Egypt with all the plagues and then of course he caused the Red Sea to come crashing down upon them when they pursued the children of Israel. And it says he destroyed them unto this day meaning that even 40 years later the nation hadn't fully recovered its power and status that it had before those destructive acts happened. And so he said, you know, they're messed up unto this day. And what he did unto you in the wilderness until you came into this place and what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the sons of Ruben, how the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up and their households and their tents and all the substance that was in their possession in the midst of all Israel. So he says, here's some examples, you know, this is what God did to Egypt and Pharaoh. That represents the heathen, right? Just people that are outside of the church, outside of Christianity, just kind of just worldly heathen, enemies of the Lord that God destroyed and harmed in some way. But then he says what he did to you, which would obviously be the people of God, Christians, today it would be, of course. And then he says what he did unto Dathan and Abiram. So there's kind of three categories here, right? You've got the worldly people out there getting judged by God. Then you've got you being judged by God, which is God's people truly saved Christians. And then you have Dathan and Abiram and Korah, which represent infiltrators, right? These represent people who had crept in, they're pretending to be God's people. They're false prophets, false teachers. They are evil reprobates, crept in unawares and so forth. And of course, God caused the earth to open up and for those guys to go down alive into hell, right? In the book of Numbers, we could read that story in chapter 16. And so God will actually bring judgments upon all three of these groups in our lifetime. We are going to see this. Now we might not necessarily see it on as grand of a scale as the children of Israel watching the Red Sea part and watching the water come over and destroy Pharaohs armies, but we're going to see wicked people, evil enemies of Christianity and evil enemies of the Lord. We will see them in our lifetime, get what's coming to them in many cases. You'll see them punished. We could sit here and think of examples, but one example that popped into my mind was when we had planned a bunch of soul winning and missions work in South Africa. And we were going there to preach the gospel and go soul winning. And then this minister of whatever, minister of Satan is what he was. But he's some kind of a government minister of the interior. I don't know what he was minister of. And he, Malusi Gigaba, was the one who was responsible for banning us all from the country, arresting and detaining our church members and kicking people out and causing us all these problems, costing us a bunch of money to having to rebook people's flights and people had to be interrogated and detained and just, you know, it was just a big hassle. And we didn't get to do the soul winning mission that we had set out to do in South Africa. What happened to him? You know, let's play a faithful word. Where are they now? You know, and this guy had aspirations to become the president of South Africa. He was a rising star politically in South Africa. And what happened to him? He ended up getting publicly humiliated in the worst possible way. Obscene videos of him being leaked onto the internet, all over porno sites, just all of this embarrassing, humiliating stuff that just totally destroyed his political career. Well, you know what? That is the wrath of God on someone who hates the Bible, hates the gospel, fights against Christian missions, trying to get people saved in his country. And you know what? When you fight against the Lord and his work, bad things are going to happen. I mean, you know, I hesitate to share this story because I just heard it really super briefly, like literally like one minute before church started. So I hope I don't mess up the story. But Brother Segura was just sharing with me how he was giving somebody the gospel recently. He said Eric was his sole winning partner. Where is he? Do you know the story I'm talking about? The car crash or was it a different Eric? Okay. Oh, it was this Eric. Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay. Well, just, just go like this. If I start telling the story wrong. Okay. All right. Give me, give me the signal. Okay. So he said that he's so winning and some guy was, some bozo was like revving a vehicle super loud, making a bunch of noise. He's trying to get the gospel, trying to get the gospel and the guy just making a bunch of noise, making a bunch of noise and shutting him down. And then next thing he knew, the guy like peeled by and like crashed into a house with the car. Am I, give me a thumbs up if I did. Oh, he smashed into the wall in front of the house. So this guy's just, you know, being prideful and arrogant and tampering with somebody who's trying to hear the gospel over here. You know, just big ego, making a bunch of noise, trying to preach the gospel, trying to win souls. And this guy's more, Hey, look at me, everybody. You know, when the gospel is being preached, when we're trying to do soul winning and then this guy just crashed and it was, it was a horrific accident. I mean, people were hurt and everything is bad, you know? And I mean, I'm just saying like, you see stuff like that and it should, how should you react to something like that? Obviously we feel bad for people, even people that are guilty because sometimes, you know, it's like father forgive them. They know not what they do, but at the same time, what we should react to that is, wow, I better mind my P's and Q's cause God isn't messing around. You know, we should always, when we see people getting judged, we should stop and think, wow, I better be careful that I'm not the next person to smash my car into a wall from doing something stupid because you know, but by the grace of God, there go we all. And so we got to take heed less we fall. We want to think to ourselves, hey, I've seen examples of God punishing the wicked or punishing people who withstood the gospel or fought against missions or, you know, tried to get Christian preaching banned from their country or whatever. And you see how they get punished and judged by God. This week I just watched a documentary about the communist dictator of Romania, Ceausescu, and of course, he ended up being shot on live TV, right? And that's what that piece of trash got for a life of wickedness and again, you know, suppressing Christianity and everything else. And he was shot with his wife on live TV, okay? And so, you know, we could obviously just go on and on with examples about that. You know, what about when he says what he did unto you in the wilderness? You know, even God's people, even good people, even godly Christians, even righteous, good Christian moral people, they're going to get chastened and chastised by God in this world. How do I know that? Because the Bible says, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Now, the difference is when God destroys the wicked is that God often just destroys them and there's no remedy and there's no silver lining with it. Whenever God brings a punishment or chastisement upon his children, it's for our benefit. It's for our good. It's sort of like when I spank my children, I'm doing it for their own good. You know, I want them to grow up and live right and love the Lord and do what's right. So I'm disciplining them so that they can be a better person and ultimately that's going to lead to them living a better life even for themselves. So they're being chastened for their benefit, right? And that's how God punishes his children. It's not the same as like, oh, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram drop them straight into hell. I mean, there's no silver lining there. Pharaoh and his armies being drowned in the Red Sea. They're done. They're in hell. There's no benefit there. But when he chastens his people, it's just to discipline them, to educate them, to make them better, to help them grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But we still want to remember that and think about that and know that. And then the third group, the Korahs, the Dathans, the Abirams, these are the people who try to creep in and instead of just openly fighting against the work of God, they come in and try to creep in and teach damnable heresy or they come in and just try to sow discord or cause problems or, you know, whatever a Judas Iscariot would do. And we know how those kind of people end up as well. You know, God ends up destroying them. And again, we could go through, we could play where are they now with some of those kind of people as well. I mean, there was a guy who came into my office a couple of years ago and the guy was screaming at me and telling me off and how, you know, how I'm wicked and whatever because of something stupid. You know, and this guy was just, this guy just, he just had it in his mind. He was just hell bent on the fact that, you know, Joe Major is a false prophet and a reprobate, and I'm like, you know, I just told him, I said, well, you know, I'm not a fan, but no, I'm not. No, I don't believe that, you know, and he's like, well then you're, you know, you just lack all discernment and you don't know. And I'm just like, I said, there's no evidence of him teaching any damnable heresy or being a false prophet or anything. So no, I'm not going to sit here because he walked in and he's like, I want you to, you know, acknowledge that you were wrong about Joe Major because it turns out he's a hero. I'm like, you know, I don't care for a lot of the things that he's saying and doing, but I'm not going to go that far. No. And then he just started just yelling at me, calling me all kinds of names. And he started like pronouncing all these curses on me about all these bad things are going to happen to me. You know, what's interesting is that none of those bad things that he cursed me with, none of those bad things happened to me. But he ended up being shot like six months later. You know, and it's like, and this guy's just going around, just blowing off his mouth, just speaking against whatever. And, you know, that's the kind of stuff that we had. We had a guy in our church that we threw out of the church because he turned out to be a sodomite. And 10 months later, dead of brain cancer, you know, under the curse of God being cast out of the local church for that abomination. OK. And again, we could sit here and go through examples, but I'm just saying there are people that are creeping in, they're weirdos. They pretend to be like us. They pretend to be of us. But then they end up turning out to be rotten people. And they end up like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram ended up. What's the lesson here? The lesson here is that God is not mocked. And whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. And so these are the three things that we need to remember, that we need to know, hey, this is what God did to the heathen. This is what God did to us. And then this is what God did to the infiltrators, the phonies. And, you know, when it comes to what he did to us, you know, we could all think of different times in our lives where God was probably chastising us or chastening us or bad things that happened to us to sort of get our attention. Maybe we're drifting from the Lord a little bit or falling into sin a little bit, and then God has to slap us around and get us back on track. And, you know, that's, you know, we've all got our own probably personal ideas of that, and we could think of examples of that. It says in verse seven, but your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord, which he did. Therefore, so because you've seen all this stuff, because you've seen the warnings, shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that you may be strong and go in and possess the land, whether you go to possess it, that you may prolong your days in the land, which the Lord swear unto your fathers to give unto them and to their seed, a land that flows milk with milk and honey. So there are two really big, important reasons why you should follow Christ, obey God's laws, keep his commandments, do what God tells you to do. Number one, out of love for the Lord, and number two, because you've seen the stuff that happens to people who disobey God, no matter what category they're in. And so those are two great reasons not to live a life of sin. Now, a lot of people will say, well, if we're saved by faith, if we're saved by grace or faith, if we can't lose our salvation, no matter what, because Christ has already died for all of our sins and we're going to heaven no matter what, well, then why not just do whatever? Well, reason number one, because you're supposed to love God, and if you love God, you don't want to just spit in his face with your actions. And number two, because you remember what he did to this person and this person and this person, and notice the examples that we're bringing up are all things that happen in this earth. You know, you could go to heaven, but you could still have some pretty bad stuff happen to you on your way there. I don't know about you, going to heaven is the big thing for me, but I kind of want to live a nice life until then, too. I don't want to go through a bunch of misery and pain and suffering and nightmares and just my life become just a living hell for the next 50 years and then go to heaven. You know, I want to be blessed and live a happy life. And even when I do go through pain and suffering, I want it to be for a reason. You know, I want it to be something that's ultimately going to be a blessing in the end, not just, Hey, I'm such an idiot. God has to just keep on disciplining me. You know, that's no way to live your life. And so God has other ways of hurting you besides sending you to hell because we're all going to heaven if we believe on Christ, but God has other ways of hurting us. And so we want to make sure that we follow him. You say, well, you know, oh, so it's just all fear based. Well, back to verse one, love the Lord God. And then you don't really need all these scary warnings, but in case your love isn't where it should be, well enter the scary warnings because by hook or by crook, we need to be obeying these commandments. We need to be following the Lord with our lives. If we want to be blessed, if we want to go into that land, which the Lord, our God has prepared for us, a land of milk and honey. Now, obviously for us, I'd be proverbially speaking because we already kind of live in the land of milk and honey because we live in America. So we, you know, we have a lot of prosperity. That's interesting. Here he begins to talk about the land that the children of Israel are going into, which is the land of ancient Israel. Now let's stop and think about when was this? When did this happen? Well, this is approximately, obviously we don't know exactly when, but we're talking approximately 1500 BC, meaning 1500 years before Jesus lived on this earth is about when this is taking place, when this is written in Deuteronomy. And so that means it was 3,500 years ago. Think about how long ago that is. That's a long time. 3,500 years ago. Okay. And back then, here's what he says about Israel for the land, whether thou goest in to possess it is not as the land of Egypt from when she came out where thou so it's thy seed and water it's it with thy foot as a garden of herbs. So the land of Egypt is one of the longest running, most successful agricultural civilizations in the history of mankind. And it has to do with irrigating the fields from the Nile. And in fact, I was just reading my Bible today in the book of Zechariah 14, where it's talking about how Egypt doesn't really get a lot of rain. And so he's going to punish them in other ways, you know, because other nations, he might cause it not to rain, but since it doesn't rain in Egypt anyway, he's going to punish them another way. I'm just kind of paraphrasing, but that's what I was reading earlier today. And the idea is that Egypt is a place where they use a lot of manpower to plow fields, irrigate them, use the Nile to produce agriculture. And God's contrasting that with the land of Israel. He says the land, whether you go to possess it, it's not that, you know, Nile Delta region or whatever, but he says the land where you go to possess is a land of hills and valleys. Okay, so it's a different biome. It's a land of hills and valleys and drinketh water of the rain of heaven, a land which the Lord thy God careth for. The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it from the beginning of the year, even at the end of the year. Now, let me just tell you something. It is nothing like that today. It's not like that at all. You know, so don't get confused when you're reading in the Bible, this land of milk and honey. Don't get disappointed if you if you decide to buy a plane ticket and go over there and find out that you're in Arizona part two when you get there this time. Arizona to the revenge Arizona to this time is personal, okay? Because it is dry, barren wilderness over there. I mean, we're talking just dry, wasteland desert. There is no way there is absolutely no way that that is what it looked like 3500 years ago. Because otherwise, what's all this talk about? You know, God caring for God's just tending it like a garden. And it's just a land that flows with milk and honey and the grapes of eschol and all that. But what's funny is a lot of people don't understand how much landscapes can change over time and how areas can become desertified over time. And that area used to be nice. Now it is just a wasteland. It's just desolate. You're like, well, this is what people are fighting over. You know, they want to be in this land. What doesn't make any sense. Now, here's the thing. As I'm reading this passage, the Bible says here that God cares for this land. There's no way God's still caring for it. It's abandoned. You know what I'm saying? Like, like imagine a garden that someone's meticulously caring for and they're watering it, they're pruning it, they're taking care of it. And then they just leave and they just abandon it. And then pretty soon it just all dries up and withers and dies. And it's just wasteland. That's what is going on over there. But what's funny is that today you still have a lot of preachers and people who have this idea that somehow that land over there is somehow so important and so special, the Holy land. And they'll even say things. Sometimes I've heard some of these over the top Zionist type preachers even talk about how, you know, God just, he just loves that land over there. He just, he just looked like the actual and I've even heard them say that God's married to that land. Like, like the earth, like the soil, like that, you know, it doesn't make any sense, you know, God's love for Israel was about the people, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God had provided them with a nice area, a nice piece of land, a promised land, you know, land that flowed with milk and honey. And he gave them this pleasant land and so forth, but it's not like God just has some kind of an obsession or some kind of a, just love for that particular hunk of dirt. Cause if so, he doesn't seem to be spending very much time there or doing very much with it right now. And let me tell you something, the same way that that land looks is the same thing that's going on over there spiritually. Cause that place is as dry as a bone spiritually. There are so few Christians over there. There is so little gospel being preached over there. That place is completely destitute of the word of God, of the gospel, of preaching, of soul winning. That place is just totally Ichabod. The glory is departed. And I mean, just look at it. It's a, it's a wasteland. Okay. No, I've never been to Israel, but I have looked at it. All right. I stood right on the edge. I was like Moses. I was not allowed to enter the promised land, but I was able to behold from Mount Pisgah. And I was able to look in to the promised land and it was not, it was, it did not look cool. And when we were driving all through the Palestinian territories, man, it was just a total desert. Like if I would've told you, Hey, you're in Southern Arizona, like you believe it. Okay. So save money and just drive down to like Yuma and drive down to El Centro, California. And, and you'll kind of get the same idea. All right. Let me, let me hurry up and move forward here. He says in verse 13 is to come to pass. If you shall hearken diligently into my commandments, which I command you this day, to love the Lord, your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain that thou may is gather in thy cord and thy wine. And I know, and of course he's clearly doing that right now. And I will send grass in my fields for thy cattle that thou may has eaten be full take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you. And he shut up the heaven that there be no rain and that the land yield not her fruit and lest he perish quickly from off the good land, which the Lord giveth you. I mean, he's kind of saying this good land may not always be good. There may be a time where it's not raining so much and where the fruit is not necessarily growing like it used to. So you better take heed to yourselves and not let your heart carry you off to other gods. And of course, that's exactly what those people over there have done. The people in that part of the world, they're pretty much worshiping the false god of Islam or the false god of Judaism, but they're not worshiping the father, the son and the Holy Ghost. And so he says, therefore, shall you lay up these words in your heart and your soul and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall teach them your children, speaking of them, when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, when thou risest up and thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thine house and upon thy gates, that your days may be multiplied and the days of your children in the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers to give them as the days of heaven upon the earth. For if ye diligently keep all these commandments which I command you to do them, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and to cleave unto him, then will the Lord drive out all these nations before you and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves. And again, this applies today, obviously not literally. We're not entering the promised land. But if we want God to bless us, we need to obey God. Right now, to be saved, we just have to believe in Jesus. But when it comes to being blessed by God, we need to do what he tells us to do. He says in verse 26, Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse, a blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day, and a curse if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day to go after other gods which you've not known. And then he tells them, of course, to put the curse on the one mountain and the blessing on the other mountain and he talks about them going over the Jordan River, going in to possess the land. And he says in verse 31, for you shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you and you shall possess it and dwell therein and you shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments which I set before you this day. Now, here's the thing. The principle applies that the path to God's blessing is through the door of obedience and disobeying God is going to lead us to curses and problems and chastisement in our lives. But what is the pathway for us toward living a more righteous life so that God can bless us? You know, now that we're already saved, we're already going to heaven, you know, we love God, we want to do what's right. What is our pathway toward that? It's walking in the spirit, right? That's the pathway that gets us there. It's not, of course, adherence to the law because the Mosaic law, that was the Old Testament that's done away in Christ. It's not just adherence to the law, but rather in the New Testament, it's about walking in the spirit, putting on the new man, denying self, taking up the cross daily, following Christ, speaking to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, walking in the spirit, reading the Bible, right? It's about walking with God in the New Testament. Now, here's the thing. If we walk with God, if we walk in the spirit, if we put on the new man, then we're going to be doing the stuff that Christ told us to do, right? Part of the great commission is to teach all nations, baptize them, and then teach them to observe all things that Christ commanded. But here's the thing, if you walk in the spirit, you're not, you'll not obey the lust of the flesh, you know? So if we love the Lord, our God, if we love our neighbor as ourself, if we walk in the spirit, if we're walking daily with the Lord, well, then that's going to lead us to a greater adherence to God's commandments, statutes, judgments, and so forth. Not, uh, the old covenant kind of follow all these strict rules, but rather, uh, following the morality of the law of God and also the explicit commandments of scripture through walking in the spirit though, you know, through just, because here's the thing, if you're walking in the spirit, you're going to do the right things anyway. You're going to do the right things, uh, instinctively because when you're walking in the spirit, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, and obviously love worketh no ill to his neighbor. You know, love's not going to steal. Love's not going to kill, commit adultery, drink, whatever. And so we in the new Testament have a benefit that the old Testament believers did not have, which is we have the permanent indwelling of the Holy spirit. And so if anybody can transcend the limitations of the flesh, the proclivities of the flesh, those sinful tendencies, even those ones that just feel so ingrained and so instinctive, those cravings that just come so naturally to us. If anybody's going to be able to overcome that, it should be the new Testament believer through the power of the Holy spirit by putting on the new man and walking in the spirit and crucifying the flesh. And if we do that, what, you know, what is it worth the effort? Well, first of all, if we love God, you know, it's our duty to do it, but also it's worth the effort because we want God to bless us. We don't want God chastising us. We want God blessing us. Well, then we better put on that new man. We better walk in the spirit. We better spend time every day and look, how does this look practically? You need to be reading your Bible every day. How are you going to walk in the spirit when you're not reading your Bible on a daily basis, you need to pray to the Lord. You need to acknowledge God. You need to read your Bible, sing hymns, right? Come to church. These are all ways that you can be communing with God, walking in the spirit, putting on the new man, speaking to yourselves in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And so, you know, don't be surprised if the flesh is just constantly leading you into sin when you're not reading your Bible and you're not spending time thinking about the things of God. You know, if you walk in the flesh, you're going to fulfill the lust of the flesh. You walk in the spirit, then you'll not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Let's provide another word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this chapter, Lord, and I pray that we would apply it to our lives, Lord, even though it's from a different time, even though it's from 3,500 years ago, Old Covenant, Lord, help us as New Testament Christians living in 2023 to understand the relevance of these things to our lives. And in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.