“Live Long and Prosper (Deuteronomy 11)", Will DuVal | 3/22/26
Deuteronomy 11:1-32 | 3/22/26 | Will DuVal
In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon led the first European expedition to what is now Florida. Legend has it (although historians doubt) he was in search of the mythical “Fountain of Youth”, a supposed magical spring believed to grant long life - even immortality - to those who drink from it. Of course Ponce never found the fountain - and in an ironic twist, FLORIDA is now where America’s elderly go to DIE! - but while this life-giving spring evaded the explorer, it was discovered nearly 4 centuries later in the Adirondack Mountains by the TUCK family, in the legendary book Tuck Everlasting. And then a half century later, Indiana Jones rescued the Holy Grail from the Nazis who were seeking eternal life and power. And even more recently, Albus DUMBLEDORE saved the Philosopher’s Stone from Lord Voldemort to prevent HIM from obtaining immortality.
All these stories (and more) fill our collective imagination and captivate us with the possibility, the pursuit, the HOPE of eternal life. We ALL want to, in the words of Spock’s famous blessing, “Live Long & Prosper”. But the good news is that we need not journey to the ends of the earth in search of a make-believe fountain, a mythical cup, or a magical stone to grant us eternal life; we need only look to God’s WORD, the Bible, by which God has promised that He brings us LIFE:
The psalmist declares “[You] give me life [, O Lord,] according to [or BY MEANS OF] your word!” (Ps 119:25). And specifically, He tells us it is in God’s LAW that we find life: “I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life.” (Ps 119:93). And even MORE specifically, it is by OBEYING God’s precepts that we are blessed with life:
Proverbs 3:1-2 “let your heart keep my commandments,
2 for length of days and years of life… they will add to you.”
Proverbs 4: “Be attentive to my words… keep them within your heart.
22 For they are life to those who find them” (vv20-22)
And that is the central message of Deuteronomy ch11 this morning as well: “You shall keep [my] whole commandment… that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to you” (Dt 11:8-9). In its original context, that was the promise of GOD, to His Old Testament people - the Israelites - by way of His appointed prophet-slash-preacher MOSES, who has undertaken in this book of Deuteronomy, or “second Law”, to REMIND Israel of the commandments that God gave them on Mount Sinai 38 years prior before God leads them into Canaan, the Promised Land He’s about to give them, because their TENURE there is contingent upon their OBEDIENCE; “keep my whole commandment… and you’ll live long in the LAND”.
But He’s also gonna WARN them that the CONVERSE is EQUALLY true: if you DISOBEY me, if “you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them [instead] then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you… and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you” (11:17).
Obey and be blessed; disobey, and be cursed. It’s really that simple this morning.
…or IS it? If it IS, then the next logical question we oughta be asking ourselves is: “How MUCH obedience… or disobedience?” Cuz we ALL obey… and DIS-obey… sometimes; we’re a mixed bag. 613 commandments in the Old Testament, 1,054 in the New - surely God doesn’t expect COMPLETE - PERFECT - obedience at ALL times…
…Or DOES He? Jesus sure made it seem like it: ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets… For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven… You must, therefore, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mt 5:17,20,48)
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And Moses seems to corroborate here in Deuteronomy 11: “You shall keep the whole commandment” (v8); he even uses the singular case - “commandment” - to underscore the point that God’s Law is one unified WHOLE. As the NT author James puts it: “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in [just] one point has become guilty of all of it.” (2:10) God is SO holy that even the SMALLEST sin, by OUR standards, is enough to keep us OUT of “God’s good graces”, relationship with Him - the Bible says our sins, ANY amount of sin, “separates us from God” (Isa 59:2) - and thus, cuts us OFF from the hope of eternal life, because according to Jesus “this is eternal life, that they know you, [Father] the only true God” (Jn17:3). We must “know” - deeply, intimately, personally be in relationship with God in order to enjoy eternal life, but our SIN - ANY of it - PREVENTS that.
So where does that leave sometimes DIS-obedient SINNERS like the Israelites… like you and ME? “Obey and be blessed; disobey and be CURSED”; is that even GOOD news for wayward people like us? Or is there BETTER news?
Let’s look to God’s word together and find out. But before we do, I wanna warn you: this sermon may end up sounding very similar to what you’re going to hear 2 weeks from today on EASTER Sunday. I have managed for the last 5 years in a ROW now to stay within the sermon series we were working through at the time for my EASTER message - one year it was easy cuz we were in the book of ACTS, so we looked at Paul’s “death to life” personal resurrection experience on the Damascus Road - but outside of that, we’ve celebrated Easter in GENESIS, Easter in EXODUS, in Leviticus, last year in NUMBERS, so I CAN’T break the streak NOW! We’re gonna celebrate Easter in Deuteronomy just two weeks from today, and I wanna take this opportunity to remind you that this is the ONLY Sunday of the year in which the primary target audience for the message isn’t YOU, Christian, but your unsaved family members and friends that we are asking and EXPECTING you to not only passively invite, but offer to save them seats, to go pick them up, treat them to BRUNCH afterward - whatever you gotta DO to help GET ‘em here - the Easter sermon is for THEM. We never ASSUME that everyone here on a Sunday is saved, and we preach the gospel every week not just for THEM but for ALL of us! - the same gospel that SAVED us also SANCTIFIES and SUSTAINS us. But 51 out of 52 Sundays of the year, my PRIMARY target audience is the CHURCH, those of you who are BELIEVERS in Christ, saved by grace through faith, who nevertheless need sanctifying and sustaining… and supplying, we need to be “equipped for the work of ministry” (Eph 4:12) in our homes and neighborhoods and workplaces and family text threads. So our aim on Sunday mornings as a church - I was reminded of this yet again last week leading Entry Point for the first time in years, explaining our mission and vision and philosophy of ministry - we’re not a “seeker-driven” church, where you just invite folks here, and I do the rest. Cuz 51 Sundays a year, they won’t COME.
But on EASTER, they WILL. So we want you to INVITE - we’re trying to make it EASY for you to do that… (cards in bulletins… social media invite to share… text message blast will go out next week… we’ve already sent MAILERS out to all the surrounding neighborhoods… most of all, we’re asking you to PRAY…).But pray, AND INVITE. And don’t get bent outta shape when the sermon sounds familiar and perhaps even a bit rudimentary, because IT’S NOT MAINLY FOR YOU (unless of course you ARE a not-yet-Christian “seeker” here with us this morning, in which case we’re SO glad you didn’t wait until Easter, and we’re especially excited to have you with us - THIS sermon is for you too, and for ALL of us. 😊
So I invite you ALL to STAND with me (as you’re able)... Deut 11:1-32… Hear the word of the Lord:
““You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. 2 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 and his outstretched arm, 3 his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land, 4 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, 5 and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son 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. 7 For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did.
“You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, 9 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. 10 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. 11 But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, 12 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.
13 “And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. 15 And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. 16 Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; 17 then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you.
18 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 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. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. 22 For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. 24 Every place on which the sole of your foot 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. 25 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.
26 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, 28 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 you have not known. 29 And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. 30 Are they not beyond the Jordan, west of the road, toward the going down of the sun, in the land of the Canaanites who live in the Arabah, opposite Gilgal, beside the oak of Moreh? 31 For you are to cross over the Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you. And when you possess it and live in it, 32 you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today.” This is the word of God…
There are plenty of interesting tidbits we’ll try and track throughout this text, but just THREE main points for us this morning: the good news, the bad news, and the fBETTER news.
So we start with the GOOD news: that…
#1- If we OBEY, we will be BLESSED. (vv8-15, 18-27)
I already introduced you to the MOST prominent of the three main points, there in v8: “You shall keep the whole commandment… that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land… and that you may live long [and PROSPER] in the land”. And everything else here in vv9 thru 15, and 18 to 27, really just serves to underscore that main point.
Like v9’s reminder that Canaan is a land that “the Lord swore to… give to [you]”. Not because they DESERVED it, Moses told them back in ch7, but as an UN-deserved GIFT; we call that “GRACE”.
And it’s a GOOD gift, a “GOOD land”, he calls it in v17; a land, v9, “flowing”, or more literally in Hebrew “OOZING” with milk and honey; what does “OOZING” connote? The ABUNDANCE of its supply, and the EASE of its sourcing; you won’t even have to WORK for this milk and honey.
So too, with their CROPS there; v10: Canaan is not like EGYPT, where you had to “sow your seed and irrigate it, like a garden”; your Bible may have a footnote explaining that the Hebrew word for “irrigate” literally reads, “water it with your feet”. Commentator David Guzik explains (Enduring Word: Deuteronomy 11): “[This] refers to the system of artificial irrigation [used in Egypt at that time] that used foot-driven pumps to lift water from the Nile to nearby fields… “It consisted of networks of ditches, canals, and holding tanks from and into which the river water could be ‘pumped’ by means of a paddlewheel-like device called a shaduf that was powered by pedals… so that the irrigation was indeed was done by foot.” (Merrill)”.
But NOT SO in Canaan; it was a LUSH land “which drinks water by the rain from heaven”; in other words, it is GOD’S garden, that HE makes sure to water and tend. “From the beginning of the year”, v12, “to the end of the year”; with “the early rain”, v14, that fell in October and November and helped soften the ground for plowing, “and the later rain,” that came around April and nourished the crops to final harvest (Guzik), “that [they] might gather in [their] grain and wine and oil”.
Moses is reiterating the four “P”s of blessing that God already promised them back in ch7:
First: POSSESSION of the Land (we saw in v8)
Second: PROSPERITY within the Land (he outlines here in vv9-15)
But the THIRD in vv22-25 is PROTECTION; God promises to PROTECT His people from “nations greater and mightier than you… The Lord will drive out all these nations before you… No one shall be able to stand against you.”
And the FOURTH and FINAL “P” God promises to BLESS them with is PERPETUITY (vv9, 21): “endless or indefinitely long duration or existence”. LONGEVITY; v9: “you [will] live long in the land”; v21: “that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land”.
Now, let’s make this PERSONAL. Because while God promised these blessings TO THEM - to Israel - and we can’t just rip them out of their historical context and apply them DIRECTLY to ourselves, God nevertheless tells us that they are recorded here, in His word, FOR US as well. Which we noted back in ch7 (SO much of this is repeated, almost verbatim, because like ISRAEL, we are FORGETFUL! We NEED the reminders!). But we noted the exegetical FLAWS in the so-called “prosperity gospel”: that God does NOT necessarily promise His people today the same earthly prosperity and protection that He promised Israel; in fact, JESUS warned those who would follow HIM that “in this world you will have TROUBLES” (Jn 16:33).
But then He said, “But take heart; I have overcome the world”. In other words, all of God’s promises find their “yes and amen”, their ULTIMATE and most GLORIOUS fulfillment in JESUS (2 Cor 1:20), who WON all of these blessings for us not just in a temporal and material sense, but in a spiritual and therefore ETERNAL way.
The Bible declares that “[God] has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph1:3); that “[God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ” (1 Pet 1:3-5)
In other words: EVERLASTING possession, prosperity, protection, and perpetuity; they’re ALL there in just those 3 verses that open 1 Peter ch1.
They speak of our POSSESSION - our “inheritance” - of an ETERNALLY better Promised Land: Heaven.
Our eternal PROSPERITY; we’ve been “born again to a LIVING hope… RESURRECTION… a salvation ready to be revealed” - the greatest of ALL our spiritual blessings, our riches in Christ.
And this blessing is SECURED for us, “KEPT in heaven for us”, PROTECTED personally, by God HIMSELF; by “HIS power [we] are guarded through faith”.
And THIS blessing, THIS “inheritance”, will last FOREVER, in perpetuity; it is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”.
God promises us an INFINITELY better land, largesse, life-insurance, and longevity… but ALL of it is contingent upon our OBEDIENCE. Now, we’re gonna talk about the “obedience of FAITH” in point #3, but let’s start with the obedience of LAW-keeping, because that is MOSES’s concern here. See, there are essentially two ways to get God’s blessing: you can EARN it by YOUR obedience (point #1 here), or you can RECEIVE it through CHRIST’S obedience (point #3 to which we’ll return). But for now I want you to NOTICE with me just how CONTINGENT all 4 “P”s are, the blessings, upon Israel’s OBEDIENCE. Let’s just COUNT together that tiniest of words with MASSIVEST of implications: “IF”.
-v13: “if you obey my commandments… [THEN] he will give you rain…”
-v22: “if you are careful to do all this commandment… then the Lord will drive out all these nations”
-v27: “IF you obey” you get the BLESSING; but
-v28: “IF you do NOT obey”, you get the CURSE.
And if we add in the the word “THAT”, which really conveys the same IDEA here, the contingent nature of God’s blessing is only FURTHER highlighted:
-v8: “keep the whole commandment… that you may be strong, and take the land… and that you may live long”; you want my BLESSINGS? Then OBEY me.
-vv18-21: “lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul… that your days may be multiplied in the land”. IF you obey, THEN you’ll be blessed.
And Moses reminds us AGAIN of some practical TIPS for training ourselves - AND our children - for obedience, here in vv18-20:
“BIND” God’s words “on your HANDS”
And “between your EYES”
And “TEACH them to your KIDS”
When you SIT and when you WALK
When you’re at HOME and when you’re out on the WAY
At NIGHT when you “lie DOWN” and first thing in the MORNING when you “RISE”
Every chance that you get, every PLACE that you go, in every WAY that you CAN: “Train up your child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Pr 22:6)
And I tried to offer you some practical tips for “binding” and “teaching” God’s word back in ch6 when Moses FIRST uttered this exhortation, almost verbatim, so I won’t repeat myself, even though MOSES does; cuz once again: we are FORGETFUL! We NEED the reminders, don’t we? The **VISIBLE reminders**, of God’s word, as we go throughout our days…
Last thing I want to draw your attention to and REMIND you of, perhaps by way of TRANSITION now, to point #2, is the geographical TERRITORY that God outlines there in v24, which CONSTITUTED the fullness of Israel’s “Promised Land”: “from the wilderness [in the SOUTH] to the Lebanon [in the NORTH], and from the river Euphrates [in the EAST] , to the western sea,” the Mediterranean. I couldn’t find a SUPER high resolution map for you, and I even had to super-impose my own best approximation of the extent of the Kingdom’s borders, but hopefully this will suffice, to remind you that - I think the estimate I gave you a few weeks ago was that at its HEIGHT, their ZENITH, during the reigns of King David and then Solomon, Israel only ever occupied roughly 30,000 of the 3 HUNDRED thousand square miles God promised them; one-TENTH of the blessing God wanted to give them (see DuVal, “Intro to Deuteronomy”, 1/11/2026).
Now if God’s BLESSING was tied to their OBEDIENCE, does that give you an idea of about how OBEDIENT Israel was, at their PEAK, their MOST obedient? One-TENTH!
Like I said, that’s a pretty good transition to truth #TWO now: If we DISOBEY, we will be CURSED. (vv1-7, 16-17, 28-32)
If we back up to verse ONE now (I know Pastor THAD covered the first 7 verses LAST Sunday, but it fits well with the rest of ch11 this morning too): “You shall LOVE and OBEY the Lord your God… ALWAYS.” That is most important; Jesus’s “greatest commandment”: ““You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mt 22:37). And how do we DEMONSTRATE our love for God, tangibly? “If you LOVE me,” Jesus said, “you WILL keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15).
That’s the main idea of Moses’s sermon, his exhortation here: “We must LOVE and OBEY the LORD”; everything else in vv2-32 is either a motivation FOR our obedience or a consequence OF our obedience (or DIS-obedience).
Vv2-7: MOTIVATION. Why obey? Because just “CONSIDER the Lord’s DISCIPLINE”.
First of all, Moses clarifies, “I want YOU to consider it; I’m not speaking to your CHILDREN”. Remember, all the Israelites who were age 20 and older back in Numbers 14, 38 years ago, during the GREAT rebellion, when they refused to obey God and take possession of the Land the FIRST time - that entire generation had to wander in the wilderness until they all died out. But now Moses is addressing the SECOND generation Israelites, SOME of whom were kids, even TEENAGERS during the Exodus from Egypt. So Moses says, “You KNOW God’s discipline, you SAW it with your own two EYES… what He did to Pharaoh. Or if you weren’t around for THAT”, cuz some of them would have been born DURING those 38 years in the wilderness, he says, “You AT LEAST remember - v6 - what God did to Dathan and Abiram.” Moses says, “I’m not REPEATING myself here for the sake of your KIDS, to try and inform them; I am REMINDING YOU. I’m talking to people who should KNOW better, than to disobey the Lord! Cuz you’ve WITNESSED the consequences, first-HAND.”
“What he did to Pharaoh… the 10 plagues. What he did to the entire ARMY of Egypt, burying them in the Red Sea, ‘destroying them to this day’”. Commentator Eugene Merrill notes ““It is a documented fact that neither Thutmose IV nor Amenhotep III, the kings of Egypt who succeeded the pharaoh of the exodus, Amenhotep II, were able to field armies large enough to undertake major military campaigns until after the period suggested here by Moses, that is, about 1400 B.C.” (NAC: Deuteronomy, in Guzik)”.
But it’s not just what God did to EGYPT; v5: “Consider what he’s done to you here in the wilderness” these 38 years.
Your Golden Calf… and God’s PLAGUE.
Your whining at Taberah… and God’s FIRE.
Your ingratitude at Kibroth-Hattaavah… and God’s plague AGAIN.
Your grumbling at Edom… and God’s FIERY SERPENTS.
Your unbelief at Kadesh Barnea… and God’s BANISHMENT.
But of ALL their rebellions, interestingly the one Moses singles out for mention here in v6 is “what God did to Dathan and Abiram… how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up”. That would have a way of staying WITH you, don’t you think? Imagine seeing THAT as a kid - recurring nightmares the REST of your LIFE! But also interesting is how Moses retells it here; do you remember who actually LED that particular rebellion, in Numbers 16? It was a guy named KORAH, who recruited Dathan and Abiram to his mutiny, but who Moses omits from his retelling here. Why?
We can’t say for sure, but I believe Moses is making the point that you don’t HAVE to be the LEADER of the rebellion, to experience God’s JUDGMENT, if you were complicit.
I’ve got two boys, one of EACH. Bo’s like Korah; if you walked in his pre-K classroom and they had the teacher DUCT-taped to the wall, I can tell you EXACTLY who led the rebellion.
But Elijah’s like Dathan… Abiram. He’s not gonna hatch the plan or LEAD the rebellion, but he is a VERY questionable judge of character, and he is VERY easily INFLUENCED: that’s a rough combination.
But maybe that’s some of YOU: you don’t START the gossip in the Mom’s text thread… but you don’t STOP it either; you’ll participate.
Maybe you’re not the boss who actually decides “we’re gonna fudge the numbers just a bit for Q2”... but you comply. You go along with it.
And Moses’s WARNING here is for YOU: not your KIDS, who haven’t yet “known or seen” God’s discipline; not your SPOUSE, who you’re ELBOWING right now (“WAKE UP! You need to HEAR this…”); not your BOSS leading the rebellion – No; YOU need his warning:
“If you DISOBEY the Lord, you will be CURSED”!
SO, v16: “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 up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly”
What is the OPPOSITE of the 4 Ps of blessing: possessing the Promised land, prosperity, protection, and perpetuity?
The 4 Ps of the CURSE:
1) Proscription (or “exile”)
2) POVERTY
3) PERISHING,
And ultimately, 4) PERDITION (that’s hell, damnation)
And friends, just as we personalized the BLESSINGS, and considered their relevance for US spiritually, as inheritors of a BETTER land, life-insurance, longevity… so too, we must personalize Moses’s WARNING here about the CURSES. And if the BLESSING offered us today is even GREATER, we need to understand that the CURSE is even WORSE.
Here is the NEW Testament’s warning concerning this greater proscription, poverty, perishing, perdition:
“This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God… since God indeed considers it just to repay with affliction those who [disobey]... when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess 1:5-9)
Friends: If we DISOBEY - disobey “the GOSPEL of our Lord JESUS” - we will be CURSED.
Which brings us to point #3, and the most important question of all: what IS “the gospel of our Lord Jesus”? What is God’s SOLUTION to our SIN problem? His DELIVERANCE from our DISOBEDIENCE?
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever TRUSTS in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)
GOOD news: If we OBEY, we’ll be BLESSED… but it’s only as GOOD as we are OBEDIENT… maybe ONE-TENTH, at our BEST.
BAD news: If we DISOBEY, we’ll be CURSED. “The wages of sin is DEATH…” (Rom 6:23a)
BUT… BETTER news: “...the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” for all who TRUST Him.
If we TRUST in Jesus, we will be SAVED. SAVED from the discarding and destitution, the death and damnation that we DESERVE.
That’s what it means to be SAVED; but what does it mean to TRUST? To trust in JESUS?
It means trusting that He lived the life of perfect obedience to God that you and I SHOULD have lived but FAILED to, thus earning God’s blessings.
It means trusting that Jesus DIED the death that YOU AND I rightfully deserve, in our place, on the cross, to bear the CURSE and pay the PUNISHMENT for our sinful DIS-obedience.
And it means trusting that Jesus ROSE from the dead to conquer the POWER of sin and death, and to give US all the BLESSINGS that were rightfully HIS - eternal LIFE, in the better “Promised Land”, heaven, with ultimate prosperity (we’re talking streets of GOLD!).
But even better than the PLACE or the PROSPERITY or ANY of the other blessings… is God’s PRESENCE. Jesus brings us back into right relationship with GOD our kind Creator, our generous Provider, our loving Father. And now former REBELS like US, who deserve to be EXILED can be ACCEPTED, who deserve to be BANISHED can be BLESSED. We can be with Him in Paradise, in God’s PRESENCE, where there is “fullness of joy, and pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:11).
…IF - there it is again; that tiniest of words with massivest of implications - we can ONLY be saved of our sins, delivered of our disobedience… IF… we trust in JESUS.
“NO ONE comes to the Father,” he said, “except through ME” (Jn 14:6).
“Salvation is found in no one else” (Ac 4:12), the Bible warns us.
CONCLUSION:
So I ask you in closing this morning: Are you TRUSTING in Jesus for YOUR salvation; His life, death and resurrection, for the forgiveness of your sins? You wanna “Live Long and Prosper”? You need not journey to the ends of the earth in search of some fanciful fountain; there’s only ONE fountain that can ETERNALLY satisfy us. Jesus said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I give will never be thirsty again.[b] The water I give… will become in [you] a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”” (Jn 4:14). Friends: if you are TIRED and THIRSTY this morning, parched, unquenched, by the “waters” of this world, come to JESUS. Come drink of the LIVING water that HE offers you, and you will NEVER be thirsty again. Let’s pray…