Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
This chapter gives to us the prophecy in store for God’s client nations.
Deut.28:1-14 narrates the promises of blessings guaranteed if a nation complies with God, but Deut.28:15-68 narrates the promises of cursing if a nation does not comply with God.
God has given America a choice as he did Israel of old. God gives every nation a choice.
Deut.28:1-2 - The believer has to listen diligently to the voice of the Lord God. This condition is mentioned four times in verses 1-14; vs.2, 9, 13, 14. With the repeated reminder of going astray mentioned at least four times in this brief passage it must be noted that God is not afraid to repeat himself, this is what we call inculcation. God knows our first instinct is to disobey him, whether we like to think that of ourselves or not, so he reminded Israel many times to obey. God has been using natural and man made catastrophes to remind us of his sovereign will for our nation. By the time of this writing Moses had the entire law, so there were no excuses. We have the entire word of God so we are even more without excuse in America.
The covenant which God made with Israel was the Palestinian Covenant, or as some call it the Deuteronomic Covenant, Deut.29.
This covenant involved the land in which they were promised by God, a land for which the Jewish pilgrims of Egypt could settle and raise their families and serve the Lord in prosperity and peace.
This was an unconditional covenant between God and Abraham. It was a promise of a land which his seed, the Jewish people, would possess forever as an inheritance from the Lord, Gen.13:15; 15:18-21; 26:3-5; Ex.6:8; Num.34:1-12; Deut.30:1-9; Jer.32:36-44 read.. Israel is the only client nation promised that eternal client nation status , though that status is on hold for now. They are promised restoration in the Millennial Kingdom of Christ, but no other nation is promised such a restoration.
During the church age a client nation is more than a body of believers living in a country, it is a physical geographical piece of land provided by the providence of God as a place to live and grow and raise your families. In a client nation under God there is a collective will among the people to be free of tyranny and anarchy, and to promote well being and prosperity to all, and to do so with an attitude of thanksgiving to God. A nation of thankful people will always be ready and willing to fight to keep this blessed status.
The foundational blessing of being a nation under God is individual freedom. This freedom requires people being responsible and their government being responsible, which means behavioral accountability both from its citizens and its governing body.
It is a place you will fight to keep, Deut.29:7. It is a place you respect, whether other nations respect you or not.
God said he would set his nation who honors his name high above all the nations of the earth. Any nation that honors God’s word will be exalted by God, and nations that do not honor God’s word, God will not honor. This is not only a principle of Scripture found to be true of individual believers, but also client nations, Isa.57:15-21; James 4:10; I Pet.5:6.
God exalts the humble, but he brings down the proud of heart. This applies to individuals as well as nations. Without genuine humility toward God our national arrogance will ruin us.
In this dispensation of the church age we do not have a land called Palestine as our promised possession as Israel did in the past, and as she will have in the Christ’ Millennial reign. However, we still have a land full of blessings because initially, and for many years, we too were a people who listened diligently, to the voice of God, Deut.28:1.
Bible doctrine is the voice of God; the voice of Christ, Jn.1:1; I Cor.2:16. It is given for us to observe. The verb observe in Deut.28:1 is phulasso, [Pr.A.Infin.]. This translated Greek word taken from the Septuagint means to keep watch, to have in custody, to guard and to defend. The infinitive used here is important simply because God’s promise of blessings only go so far as we keep observing his word. When we as a people stop observing God’s holy word to keep it, and guard it; so goes the blessings of God.
Ever sense the Reformation Period, where the Bible was looked upon by godly men as the sole authority for mankind to know how to respond, repent and turn to God, it has been attacked. The word of God has been attacked by the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, where moral relativism was spawned which said we do not need a single source, i.e. God to tell us what is right from wrong; by bad science that has attempted to replace God as our Creator, by humanistic selfish amoral philosophies, and a sensual Epicurean culture of pleasure being man’s chief aim. Indeed Satan, the prince and the power of the air, is at work in his cosmic battle to discredit God and all that is holy. Where does that leave God’s people, who are the born again saints of the Lord?
The believer is responsible for learning and guarding the word of God, and defending it, Jude 3, not hiding it or being ashamed of it. In Matt.5:14-16 Jesus Christ says you are not to hide his light under any circumstances. Our nation needs to see God’s light through our lives because we live in a nation that is being shrouded in evil darkness, Mt.6:23.
Right now no other nation in the world is like the United States of America. No other people on the face of the earth do more to help nations in their time of need than we do. No nation of people sends out the number of missionaries to spread the saving light of the loving Gospel of Jesus Christ more than the USA. No nation offers a safer haven for local churches to proclaim the Gospel and the life changing teachings of the word of God than the United States. God still blesses our nation today because enough believers want the word and they are afforded the right to hear and read the word by our government.
God does not bless this nation because we are smarter than other nations or because we do more for others. The only reason our nation can do more for others is because our laws protect our rights as believers and citizens to assemble for Bible study, worship, and to share the Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ. What other reason would God have to show his grace to us? Do we think God is good to us because we are nice people, or that he is in need of what we have, certainly not? As we will see, the less we depend and lean on God, the less he is inclined to dole out to us his divine providential grace blessings.
These grace blessings dried up in Europe long ago and thus the Puritans, who were of John Calvin’s doctrinal persuasion, thought it only right that they be able to continue to use Calvin’s Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible translation does have sharp Calvinistic footnotes, and yet the Church of England said this was unlawful. Now I am not a Calvinist theologically, but the Church of England did not have the right to say what Bible the people could have.
The Church of England demanded Church approval and oversight of the peoples worship as did the Catholic Church. But the Church of England was not as interested in reform from the Catholic Church as were the Puritans, but the Church of England still sought control of the lives of its people. This Geneva Bible eventually drove King James I to have his own translation, one without Calvin’s footnotes.
The Puritans saw this as an attempt to limit their freedom of worship, for after all they were called Puritans because they sought to purify the Church of England. Of these Puritans were those among their ranks who moved about from place to place to find a sanctuary in which to worship God freely and purely. These within the Puritan ranks were called Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims exiled themselves in Holland for twelve years until the loose lifestyle of Holland got to them. They saw the hedonism affecting the rearing of their children.
These Pilgrim believers, so named after their identification with Peter’s writing, I Pet.2:11, had a choice to make. They could either watch their children slide into immortality and evil living, or go back to England and be subject to the religious scrutiny of the Church of England.
However, they heard of a people who had gone to the New World in the West, the people along with the Pilgrims boarded ships lead by Captain Christopher Newport who sailed to what would become an English settlement, which we know as Jamestown, a colony established May 14, 1607 on what was named the James River. Those settlers were sent by the London Company, a group of English merchants seeking treasure, seeking a place to grow new and better crops, and seeking a place to spread the Christian faith. The Pilgrims said “why can’t we go there as well?”
They knew it would be a dangerous trip and that deprivations and dangers would be on every side, but if they could but worship God freely by learning and obeying God’s holy word they were willing to go to this new world. It is from the free will of these folks that God provided the beginnings of a new land; a land they would have to fight for and fight to keep.