He said, look, if you will obey my commandments, he said, you'll be the greatest nation in
the world, you'll be lifted up above all other nations, you will have great prosperity financially.
He said you'll have lots of children, you'll be multiplied physically.
He said your animals will be blessed, your cattle will be blessed, things will go your
way.
Your enemies won't attack you, they'll be afraid to attack.
If they try to attack, they won't win.
You'll be safe, you'll be secure, you'll be blessed.
God is promising to help them in all these great ways.
But look at verse 15, but, and I think this could be applied to the United States, you
know if the United States would love God, this is a blessing that could come upon us.
Look at verse 15, it says, but it shall come to pass if thou wilt not hearken unto the
voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which
I command thee to say, that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee.
Cursed shalt thou be in the city and cursed shalt thou be in the field.
Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.
Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy
kind and the flocks of thy sheep.
Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out.
The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation and rebuke in all that thou set his thine
hand unto for to do until thou be destroyed and until thou perish quickly because of the
wickedness of thy doings whereby thou hast forsaken me.
The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee.
That's talking about disease.
I mean nobody wants to have their body filled with disease, but he says that the pestilence
will cleave unto thee.
What verse are we in?
Can you help me out?
Until ye have consumed thee from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.
The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption and with a fever and with an inflammation
and with a what?
That's the only time in the whole Bible that that word is used.
God will smite you with an extreme burning and with the sword and with blasting and with
mildew and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.
And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass and the earth that is under thee
shall be iron.
He's saying you know you're going to go out and try to farm.
It's going to be like farming with brass and iron.
You know the soil, when you go, when you do farming, you know I planted a few small gardens.
I'm not a farmer.
Most of my gardens have failed.
I don't have a green thumb, but you know you dig down and you know you dig down and just
a little ways you just hit like this rock hard.
You know either stone or clay and you know you try to put water on it and you just can't
break through it.
What you want is that brown soft topsoil right where the shovel just goes through it like
a hot knife through butter.
God says you know what I can curse you and God's the one who controls the weather.
Despite what everybody else will tell you, God is in control of the weather.
He makes the sun to rise and the sun to set.
He brings on the four seasons each year.
He is the one who controls cold and winter and heat and summer and God controls the weather.
He can control the sky.
He can make it rain or not rain.
He can send us seven years of plenty.
He can send seven years of famine.
He can make the earth like iron and the sky like brass.
He said in verse 24, the Lord shall make the rain of thy land, powder and dust.
You remember that in the, there was a time in the United States when this took place,
there was a dust bowl in Oklahoma where literally dust was blowing and destroying everything
and it was so dry that basically people had to move and relocate from Oklahoma because
it got so bad they couldn't even live there.
He says right here, the Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies.
Thou shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them and shall be removed
unto all the kingdoms of the earth.
Now that happened to the children of Israel, didn't it?
They got scattered to all kingdoms of the earth.
It's called the diaspora where they're dispersed all throughout the world.
And he says, thy carcass shall be meat unto all fowls of the air and unto the beasts of
the earth and no man shall fray them away.
The Lord shall smite thee with the botch of Egypt and with the emerons and with the scab
and with the itch whereof thou canst not be healed.
The itching is a terrible thing, isn't it?
He said, I'll smite you with an itch that you'll never be healed.
That's pretty bad punishment, isn't it?
The Lord shall smite thee with madness.
That means insanity.
He's saying God will smite you with insanity.
The Lord shall smite thee with madness.
He made Nebuchadnezzar mad.
He took away Nebuchadnezzar's mind from him.
And blindness and astonishment of heart and thou shalt grope at noonday as the blind gropeth
in darkness and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways and thou shalt be only oppressed
and spoiled evermore, he's saying, forever and no man shall save thee.
Thou shalt betrothed the wife and another man shall lie with her.
That sounds pretty bad.
He said, thou shalt build a house and thou shalt not dwell therein.
Thou shalt plant a vineyard and shalt not gather the grapes thereof.
Thine ox shall be slain before thy eyes and thou shalt not eat thereof.
Thine ash shall be violently taken away from before thy face and shall not be restored
with thee.
Thy sheep shall be given unto thine enemies and thou shalt have none to rescue them.
Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people and thine eyes shall look
and fail with longing for them all the day long and there shall be no might in thine
hand.
The fruit of thy land and all thy labors shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up.
And thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed always so that thou shalt be mad for the sight
of thine eyes which thou shalt see.
The Lord shall smite thee in the knees and in the legs with a sore botch that cannot
be healed.
From the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head, the Lord shall bring thee and thy
king which thou shalt set over thee unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers
have known and where thou shalt serve other gods, wood and stone.
And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb and a byword among all nations whither the
Lord shall lead thee.
You know what that means to be a byword?
Basically people just use your name and use your nation just as a curse.
Like oh man you don't want to be like so and so.
Don't end up like so.