In Leviticus 26:3 God says to those who call themselves His people: “IF you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and perform them, THEN I will ….” In Deuteronomy 28:1 He makes the same statement through the same man (Moses): “Now it will come to pass, IF you diligently obey the voice of the Lord Your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you this day, (THEN) the Lord your God will ….” Immediately following these statements the Lord lists the many ways He will bless those who have taken Him as their LORD (Master, absolute potentate, king, ruler) and who “CAREFULLY OBSERVE ALL” of His commandments. He tells us to KEEP (Heb.-to surround so as to protect) His commandments and to PERFORM (obey) them. The Word “keep” is a military term, the same term God used when He commanded us to “Remember THE (His) Sabbath Day and KEEP IT (not Sunday) holy ….”

As plainly stated in the previous posting, God wants to bless mankind. He made man for the purpose of being his God and treating him well. Equally plain is the fact that man, being a free moral agent, has a part to play in the situation.  Made equally plain is the fact that one has to qualify to receive His blessings by doing WORKS–obeying His Word. Faith without such works is dead faith (Jam. 2:14,17,18,20,24,26). We live by our faith. Dead faith produces a dead faither. From a previous series we know that one has to qualify to receive God’s curses. This series will focus on how to qualify to receive His blessings. We will do this by studying the first part of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. I will comingle the two messages in order not to be redundant. One will remember that each promised blessing will be preceded by an unspoken statement: “IF you OBEY  ….”

God promises to give His obedient servants good weather for agricultural production so that they will have food aplenty. They will be blessed in the city and in the country. Their children will be blessed, as will their herds and flocks. Obedient people will be blessed when they come in and when they go out. They will be blessed in their storehouses and in whatever they put their hands to do. They will have to empty their barns of old gleanings to make room for the new gleanings. Planters will overtake reapers. Their baskets and kneeding bowls will be blessed. Obedient people will have peace in their land. Their enemies who rise up against them will flee from them. No sword will go through their land. They will fear no one and nothing.

God promises obedient people that He will live among them and walk among them. He will be their God and they will be His people. He will establish them as His holy people. All people of the earth will see that they are called by His name and will fear them. He will open up His good treasures for them. They will lend to many nations and borrow from none. They will be the head (leaders) and not the tail (followers). They will be above all other people in every aspect of life. God’s blessings will “come upon and overtake” those who believe God’s Word and diligently obey it.

What one hears from church people is: “But experience proves this not to be the case. I and all of my friends and family members are Christians.  None of us is blessed the way God promises in the Bible. We are all Christians, yet we suffer just like the non-christians.” For both church and nonchurch people, the Bible does not reflect reality. Therefore, their truth centers around human experience, not God’s Word, which Jesus said was Truth (Jn. 17:17). When it comes to reality, human experience trumps the Bible. The church “knows” this to be true because life “just doesn’t work that way.” The question is Why? Did God lie about it? Is He a prankster? Was He just pulling our leg?

The problem is that Catholics and Protestants are not God’s people. They are Christians in name only.  In God’s view they are no different from non-Christians. They have been led astray by Satan’s false prophets just as Jesus warned about in Matthew 24:5. Those false prophets were led astray by those who taught them. Those who taught the teachers were themselves led astray by those who taught them. Question: how is this possible when God told them the Truth in His Word? Answer: because man deems as “truth” that which reflects his reality. This viscous cycle has resulted in not only the lack of blessings from God, but an abundance of cursings from Him. Codus-19 is one of those curses. L.J.