Pastor Maselo Mosomane
“Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the LORD your God. …But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you” Deuteronomy 28:1-2, 15
Now that we know where it all went wrong, it is in our hands to turn the tables right side up. We know it all went wrong when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. We know that, much as they ate what was ordered not to be eaten; the real problem was in disobedience. The same with us today; when we disobey, all things crumble down on us and around us. I think we are now ready to face ourselves eye ball to eye ball and tell ourselves the truth. The mess we are in originates from the fact that we disobeyed God. When Adam messed it up, we messed it up too. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:19
You will remember that when Adam fell, a curse was pronounced upon the earth for his sake. “Cursed is the ground for your sake;” Genesis 3:17. “For your sake” means for your detriment. The curse in the ground will not harm the ground but him in whose sake it was pronounced. Because of this curse, Adam and his descendents became official beneficiaries of the outcome of the curse. We are unfortunately affected by that heritage.
I believe we all know that as we are writing this message Adam is dead. He died many years ago. Since we are his descendents, what he had belongs to us too. We inherited his estate. How do one come to know what part in the inheritance belongs to him? We come to know our share by reading the will. Today we are going to read the will grandpa Adam left for us.
When we read the will we learn that Adam left us two things; one: a disobedient nature. Because of this item in the will, we are by nature orientated towards disobedience. We will to obey but we end up disobeying. A desire to please God is there but we always do what we don’t desire. “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.” Romans 7:15. Although the intention to do what is good is there, we can only produce after our kind. Two: as we read on, the will states that we also inherited a cursed ground. Our environment comes with a curse deposited in it. I suppose poor old Adam wanted to leave us something better but one can only include in the will only what belongs to him or her. We may wish otherwise but the will won’t change. We are left to have a disobedient nature and a cursed environment. You don’t go any further than that if you are looking for trouble – trouble inside, trouble around us.
I don’t think it requires any amount of intelligence to realize that our inheritance means trouble. It is a sure recipe for troubled life. A curse will always manifest in three ways; namely: poverty, sickness and death. We see this in Deuteronomy 28 where God listed two things that will either lead to a blessing or a curse. We don’t have time to get into this, but take time to read the whole chapter and you will have a clear understanding of what we are talking about. The main thing God is saying in this chapter is that when you obey Him, you will be blessed. But when you disobey Him you will be cursed.
Basing it on Deuteronomy chapter 28, maybe it is the right time to attempt to unpack the curse. Throughout the bible, a curse is always observable in three dimensions. Every time there is a curse in one’s life, one or two or all three of these dimensions will be visible. This is not something nice to talk about, but it is stated in the bible. You see we don’t only find what we want in the will; some of the things we find there are not admirable.
Do you still want to know where we went wrong? Well; it is stated in the will my friend. The bible states that disobedience leads to poverty. Disobedience also leads to sickness and it finally, leads to death. As we have suggested; read Deuteronomy chapter 28 and you will see. Like we have already said we won’t have time to cover the whole chapter; we will however try to pick up synopsis and simplify it for your understanding.
A curse comes in stages. What do we understand by this word “stages?” The word means, the effect or the manifestation of a curse always comes in an organized pattern. It doesn’t just come in any way. Many times it is organized in this grouping; POVERTY, SICKNESS and DEATH. It is arranged in this way in order to intensify the impact Ievels. We might as well call this the three stack price of disobedience. Normally this is how things will work: first you become poor then sick and finally you die. Statistics tells us that poverty breed sickness and sickness breeds death.
Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 28. As we read this chapter, we realize that from verse fifteen to twenty the bible is talking about economic position with regard to a curse. Disobedience affects our economic outcome. It affects the produce of our land and the increase of our livestock. We might as well say it affects us in business and at our place of employment. It affects our bank account (basket) and impinges on our children. Check on your bank account; check on your children and see what description befits their situation. Some of these things are so direct we want to skip them when we read; but they’ve got to be read. Everything about us is cursed when we disobey God - every work of our hand; nothing excluded. It’s hard to believe but even our rain patterns will be affected. Look around and see what’s happening to our climatic condition.
Let’s move on to verses twenty one and see how these influence our health. We do not have any medical training and as such lack expertise in this field, but; according to the list, almost all the known sicknesses are included in the list. There are, however some that got discovered later as centuries unfold; we acknowledge that with respect. But it looks like they all owe their derivation in the ones already mentioned in verses twenty one to twenty eight.
There is a statement we come across throughout this chapter and we cannot ignore. It comes over and over we feel bound to pay attention: “until you are destroyed.”To be specific, the statement is repeated five times in this chapter; i.e. in verses 20, 24, 45, 51 and 61. To be destroyed is to be killed, to be obliterated – to be wiped out. This is death. Disobedience kills.
Disobedience will always cause poverty, sickness and death. We don’t have to agree with this in order to authenticate the statement. It works independent of our opinion. It works just like the coming up of the sun and the going down of the same – it works independent. Disobedience works better when denied or ignored. Denial and paying no attention to it serves it better for in that case it works undisturbed. Many times we disobey and when called to give account we deny it. This gives a curse enough breeding space to occupy more land in our financial affairs.
It’s becoming more and more evident that our state of financial prosperity is a choice we have to make. The choice we make today determines the quality of life we end up with at the end of the assembly line. Unfortunately most of the choices me make provides microwave results that lasts for a season. “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin” Hebrews 11:24-25
Is this not time that we come of age and make the right choices? Is this not time we take lessons from Moses and refuse the pleasure of sin that lasts for a season? Friend; the heartbeat of my heart in writing this message is to encourage you to choose OBEDIENCE rather than DISOBEDIENCE. It does not matter what the world standard says. Choose what God has already chosen for you. It does not matter how fashionable or popular the idea might be. Agree with God about your life no matter what circumstance or people around you dictate.
I reiterate as I close; read the whole chapter and you will see where we are missing it with regards to prosperity.
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