THROUGH THE BIBLE - Deuteron..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Here we're going to read in chapter 11 a divine expectation from the Lord to the people of Israel that they will remain faithful. And perhaps that is the teaching of Deuteronomy through the whole book.

And that is a divine expectation from the Lord to the people of Israel that they will remain faithful. They are going to enter into the promised land, and the expectation of the Lord is that because of what He has done, liberated them from the land of Egypt, from the bondage that they were in, that they will remain faithful, that they will continue to believe on the Lord, and that they will continue to love the Lord in their hearts, truly and in substance, in the spirit. So here we're gonna have that exhortation in Deuteronomy chapter 11. And what I want us to do is just simply take the contents of this chapter and get an encouragement for our souls as new covenant people, precisely to remain faithful, just as Moses is going to call the people of Israel to remain faithful as they are about to enter into the promised land. I want us to take what is contained here and under the lenses of the New Covenant to get an encouragement for us as the New Covenant Church to remain faithful as we move through this pilgrimage of our lives and as we move towards the glory that the Lord has promised for the New Covenant Church.

My only goal is that in my soul and in your soul there will be simply an encouragement. I want to point you to remain faithful. I want to speak about your faith, the faith that you have in the Lord Jesus Christ, taken here from Deuteronomy chapter 11, so that you will know how to remain faithful, at least from the principles that we read here in Deuteronomy chapter 11. So what we're going to be seeing here in this chapter is three things, brothers and sisters. The first thing is the object of the faith that is expected in the people of Israel.

That is, why are they supposed to be faithful, or the object of their faith? Why are they supposed to be faithful? The second thing that I want you to see here in this chapter is how we are supposed to faithful? What are we supposed to do to remain faithful? And then the third thing that I want us to see from this chapter is the consequences of not being faithful to the Lord.

So let's take our Bibles in our hands. You have them there, brothers and sisters, and with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I hope with guidance and leading and illumination of the Holy Spirit, let's read together Deuteronomy chapter 11. And as I said, my desire is that I will be able to encourage you to speak to your soul by the Spirit, to encourage you to remain faithful, seeing those things there, the object of our faith and why we're supposed to be faithful, how are we supposed to remain faithful, and the consequences of not being faithful, those three things. And if you pay attention to verse one in chapter 11, we have a therefore there. according to your Bible, it should be the first word, or perhaps the third word, you shall therefore.

That is because everything that is gonna be said there in chapter 11 comes from what has been said in chapter 10. So I'm going to invite you just to simply read from verse 21 of chapter 10, and we will get into chapter 11 that way. So let's read together, brother, sister, dear soul here with us, within the sound of my voice, let's read together Jeremy chapter 11, starting from chapter 10, verse 21. He says in verse 21, chapter 10, He is your praise. He is your God who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.

Your fathers went down to Egypt, 70 persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His rules, and His commandments always. And consider today, since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it, consider the discipline of the Lord your God, His greatness, His mighty hand that He's outstretched he did in Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and to all his land, and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day, and what He did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place, and what He did to Bethlehem and Abiram, the sons of Eliyahu, sons of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them in the midst of all Israel. For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that He did. You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I commend you today, that you may be strong and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey.

For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which brings water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I commend you today, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full.

Take care, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut out the heavens so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly of the good land that the Lord has given you. Verse 18, this is how we are to be faithful. You shall, therefore, lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your souls, and you shall bite them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as trumpets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

You shall write them on the door spots of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children might be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to you through all this commandment that I command you to do. Loving the Lord your God, walking in all His ways and holding fast to Him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than Him. Every place in which the soul of your food treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the river, the river Euphrates, to the Western Sea. No one shall be able to stand against you.

The Lord your God will lay the fear of you and the dread of you on all the land that you shall tread, as he promised you. See, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The consequences of not being faithful. Verse 27, the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that ye have not known. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessings on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.

Are they not beyond the Jordan? west of the road to where the going down of the sun in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah opposite Gilgal beside the Oak of Moab, for you are to cross over the Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God has given you. And when you possess it and live in it, you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today. And this is the reading of God's Word. May He be with us as we proclaim His words and as you hear His words.

Now, as I said, brothers and sisters, my intention and my goal is to share with you just an encouragement that just as the Lord requires the people of Israel under the Old Covenant to remain faithful as they are trying to enter into the Promised Land, that we will take that, that exhortation given under the Old Covenant, and that will apply to us under the New Covenant. Now, I have to demonstrate for you that it is good for us to actually do that exercise. So I'm going to invite you to come with me to Ephesians chapter 2, because there is an assumption there that I'm making that I want to prove before I exhort your soul from the Scriptures. So come to Ephesians chapter 2, and let me show you why the Apostle Paul speaks of comparison and how we are to deal with the old covenant as we apply it to the new covenant. So Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians chapter 2, let's read together, and this will help me to make my point here in verse 11. Here the Apostle is speaking about the Gentiles and the Jews, and what the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, what the cross does for the Gentiles who were not under the old covenant, which is the one that we're reading about. As we progress through these books in Deuteronomy and Numbers and all of these books, We are reading about the Old Covenant given to the people of Israel. And if we are going to derive their teachings and applications for our soul as New Covenant people, we are to understand, first of all, how that Old Covenant relates to the New Covenant so that everything that will say will be not only true but rooted in the Scriptures. Chapter 2, the Apostle is addressing primarily that, the reality that Gentiles and now Jews are being united, all covenant people, with new covenant people, united in one man that is the person of Jesus Christ.

I think I said Ephesians 2, right? So Ephesians 2, verse 11, it says, Then, speaking to the Gentiles, then remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers, something very important, strangers to the covenants of promise, or of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. And now, in Christ Jesus, You who once were far off, that is the Gentiles, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Pay attention to that last statement, to that statement in verse 12, saying that the Gentiles are strangers.

to the covenants of promise, or to the covenants of the promise. Something very important that we need to understand here. A couple of things, brothers and sisters. The first thing that I want you to see there from that text is that Gentiles are indeed alienated strangers to the covenant that was given to the people of Israel. The covenant that was given to them was a covenant that was based upon obedience and was a covenant that works which the Gentiles ask we do not belong to.

Very clear from the text. However, the scriptures clearly speak that those covenants are the covenants of the promise. And that promise is that Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, was going to come to fulfill all the requirements of those covenants, fulfilling the promise that was given not only in Genesis 3.15, but rather also given before the ages began, according to Titus chapter 1, that there will be salvation, the promise of salvation for all the peoples of the world. Why is this important?

This is important, beloved of Jesus Christ, because the covenant given to Moses, in a sense, is a servant of the promise to which now we belong by our salvation in the person of Jesus Christ. Those things that were said and that were required of the people of Israel the promise that now is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ and in the New Covenant. All time, from the beginning of redemption, God has required that His people, independently of the Old Covenant or New Covenant, will be circumcised in the heart, not in the flesh. That is how chapter 10 finished, that they were supposed to The requirement of God to the people of Israel was that they will not only manifest an external obedience in alignment with the covenant, but that deeply and primarily their faithfulness will be rooted in a circumcision of the heart that only happens by faith. The old covenant, the covenant given to Moses, was not able to produce that in the people of Israel.

It was only faith, ultimate faith, in the God of that covenant that was promising that there was gonna come someone who was going to fulfill the requirements of that covenant, the promise. And then by virtue of that promise, everyone will be able to remain faithful to the Lord God of Israel, or the Lord God of the church, or the Lord God of the new covenant. The faithfulness that was expected of the people of Israel was a faithfulness that was rooted in the circumcision of the heart. And because they were not circumcised in the heart, but they were focused on external obedience, many of them will fail. And that is also the requirement and the expectation for the people of the new covenant, that we will be circumcised in the heart.

that the external manifestations of religion, that the external deeds of religiosity, that the external deeds of moral behavior and ethical behavior will be put to death, and they will be rooted only in circumcision of the heart. How are we to remain faithful until the end? only if your heart has been fully transformed by the hand of the God who gave not only the old covenant, but the eternal covenant to Jesus Christ, that those who are united to him will make it until the end. brother and sister, dear friend, within the sound of my voice. There is no purpose and there is no value in external things when they are not done with substance in the heart.

If your heart today and in your conscience today, even within the sound of mind, will say the Christ to you of the condition of your heart that has not been circumcised by the Spirit, but rather you are just simply aiming to have external deeds and external behaviors that are religious in nature, David, let me just tell you that you will not only not be faithful until the end, but you will have to give an answer to the God that you claim that you follow. It's very important, brother, sister, friend, dear soul, within the sound of my voice, that the root of everything that we do is rooted and established upon the circumcision that is found in our hearts. What is the object of this faithfulness? How are we to remain faithful according to what we have there in Deuteronomy chapter 11? The Lord requires the people of Israel a couple of things.

That they will remember the works of the Lord. That they will remember the things that the Lord has done in liberating them out of the land of Egypt. That they will remember, not that they did not know, but that the people of God is always in need to remember the works of the Lord on behalf of the people. Remember how I brought you out of the land to Egypt. Remember my 19 hands and my arm and my power upon the people of Egypt and how I destroy them.

Remember. The same thing we ought to do, brother and sister. We are to remember the works of the Lord, not only for the church, but the works of the Lord for your soul. That you were liberated, that you were taken from captivity, from that of Egypt, from the world, not only the things and the words of the Lord in the past, but also the judgments of the Lord in the past. We have to remember what the Lord has judged and has done, not only for the hidden, but also for his own people, and that we will be filled with fear and reverence of the Lord, that we know that this Lord, who is merciful and mighty, is also just.

according to his or her deeds. We are to remember the works of the Lord and the judgments of the Lord. But not only that, brothers and sisters, the object and the way that we remain faithful is not only looking to the past, but it's also looking to the future and what comes ahead. The Lord God of Israel says to the people of Israel, this land that I'm going to give you is not like the land of Egypt. It is a land that I care for, the writing will come and you will have everything that you desire.

This land that belonged to a fallen world was what the Lord was calling the people of Israel not only to look at but also to desire. faithful to him is by remembering what he has done for your soul, the judgments of the Lord, and also the glorious promises of God. If this is what he promised to the people of Israel, now think about the promise that he has given to your soul. It is not a fallen land that's kept and reserved for the people of God, but rather the place where righteousness dwells, eternal communion with Jesus Christ, where sin is no more. And the church of the Lord is called to remember the past and to have certainty of the things that are coming in the future.

Brother and sister, when there is so much uncertainty in this world and when there are so many things that are taking place, your flesh is going to desire many times and is going to be tempted to try to find solutions on your own. You're going to try to find solutions and ways to solve the things that are taking place on your own and according to your intellect and according to your mind. Yet the scriptures calls you to remember. Remember what the Lord has done. Remember the judgments of the Lord and remember the word of the Lord when it comes about the promise that is given for your soul.

Do you believe that? Because that is the core of a circumcised heart, that we trust and that we believe what he has done and what he says that he will do. And that is why in verse 18, he calls not only the people of Israel, but in the same principle, the people of the new covenant, that we should keep these words, not in our minds, but where? In our hearts. That we will keep the words of the Lord in our hearts.

that we will treasure them, that we will keep them inside of our mind and inside of our heart, that we will teach them and pass them on to the covenant people, in that case to the children, into the family, to the Israel people. Now under the new covenant we are to have the word of God dwelling in us spiritually, admonishing and teaching one another, The only way that your soul is going to remain faithful until the end is if you remember the works of the Lord and the judgments of the Lord, and if you have certainty about the promises that He has given you. And many times your heart and your mind will fail, and that is when it's needed that a brother or a sister of the Lord's covenant will come to pour upon you the riches of the works of God upon your soul so that you will remember. what the Lord has done for you, that you might remember from where you have fallen, that you may remember the darkness of the place that you've gone to, and the light into which you have been brought, and that you might have remembered also the promise that he has given you, that independently of who you are, and the things that you have done, and the darkness of your sin, and the corruption of your mind, that independently of those things, he's so gracious and so merciful in the person of Jesus Christ, that He will take you until the end. Why and how do we remain faithful?

Having a heart that is circumcised, remembering what He has done in His judgments, having certainty of the promises that are to come, keeping the words of God in our hearts that the love of God will be perfected, and paying attention to the beautiful wording for those who do not want to do so. that if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, it was said to the people of Israel that a curse will come upon you. If you obey the things that the Lord has commanded you, then will be a blessing will come upon you. Praise the Lord now that under the new command we have the spirit of God that is the seal and the guarantee of our belonging and of union with Christ. But oh my dear soul, how silly will you be if You think that just because there is a doctrine that speaks of the coming of the Spirit upon your heart, and the sealing of that Spirit, and the guarantee of that Spirit upon your soul, that you give yourself to lewdness, and freedoms of the flesh, and to things that are not holy, and not corresponding to what is written, just because you rest not upon Christ, but because you rest upon a doctrine that someone taught you.

the clear evidence of a genuine fear of God in your heart to this warning that scripture gives that those who do not remain faithful are going to be found lacking and sent to where they belong, the clear evidence that our heart was receiving that reverence and genuine fear is only if that heart has been truly regenerated and the circumcision of the heart has taken place. genuine fear and genuine reverence, and not only just taking that as a permission for you to do what you want, a clear manifestation of the Spirit of God is upon your soul. It is not about where we're going to meet, brother, sister. It's not about how powerful or mighty our church is going to be. It is not about how are we going to do things or how are we going to not do things.

It's not about that, brother, sister. It's about your heart. Protect yourself from religion, even if this is religion for you. Protect yourself from the deeds of your being that are external and not rooted in a heart that is completely circumcised by the power of the Holy Spirit, that every time that you are in need and your soul is in need of the presence of the Lord, you remember what he has done for you. the darkness from when he took you and he rescued you.

The worst, the mighty works, because separating the ocean of the sea and bringing the people out of Egypt, that is one thing. But making out of the corruption that was in you something that is holy, and making something that is not only holy, but is also the son or the daughter of God, that requires a mighty hand, and that is the hand of the Lord. That is the work of the Lord that he will not forsake. He is not like men that we start certain things and then we forget and we forsake what we started. The hand of the Lord will bring to completion that what He started.

And in that, with a regenerated heart, with a heart that has been circumcised by the power of the Spirit, we can have trust and remain faithful, remembering what He has done, remembering His judgments, having confidence and certainty in the promises of the Lord, and being fearful of the warnings of the Scripture.