Today’s Bible Translation
Bible translation used in today’s episode: Ch. 26 NCV, Ch. 27 NIV, Ch. 28 NLT
Podcast Introduction
It’s the Law Monday. We’ll read Deuteronomy 26-28. I’m calling this episode “Remember.“
Summary
In Deuteronomy 26-28, God emphasizes the importance of obedience as the Israelites prepare to enter the Promised Land. They’re told to set up reminders like a stone monument and altar to remember His law and promises. This is because people tend to forget.
The Law was given to show what sin is, even though God knew people couldn’t fully obey it. He had a plan for our salvation with Jesus at its center.
We often forget, so God gave us the Bible, encourages us to attend church, and pray regularly to stay close to Him. These actions don’t earn salvation; it’s a gift by grace when we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, a reminder of God’s undeserved favor.
Listen to the episode for more!
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The Team
Lifespring Family Berean, Sister Denise: Transcript Correction
Michael Haner: Podcasting 2.0 Chapters
Lifespring Family Berean, Brother Scott Snider: Show Art
Jason Paschall: Show Art
Lifespring Family Berean, Sister Brittaney: Newsletter Publisher
Transcript
Transcript corrected by Sister Denise
Steve Webb 0:00
God knows how forgetful people are.
Steve Webb 0:03
This is the Lifespring! One Year Bible coming to you from Riverside, California, and podcasting since 2004, I’m your OG Godcaster, Steve Webb. It’s The Law Monday and we’ll read Deuteronomy 26 through 28. The website is lifespringmedia.com, and contact information will be at the end of the show. Before we read, let’s pray. Our heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you so much for your Word. We thank you for revealing yourself to us through your Word. Teach us today I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right, are you ready? Let’s get started.
Steve Webb 0:40
Deuteronomy, chapter 26. When you go into the land the Lord your God is giving you as your own, to take it over and live in it, you must take some of the first harvest of crops that grow from the land the Lord your God is giving you. Put the food in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God will choose to be worshiped. Say to the priest on duty at that time, “Today I declare before the Lord your God that I have come into the land the Lord promised our ancestors that he would give us.” The priest will take your basket and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall announce before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with only a few people, but they became a great, powerful, and large nation there. But the Egyptians were cruel to us, making us suffer and work very hard. So we prayed to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he heard us. When he saw our trouble, hard work, and suffering, the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his great power and strength, using great terrors, signs, and miracles. Then he brought us to this place and gave us this fertile land. Now I bring part of the first harvest from this land that you, Lord, have given me.” Place the basket before the Lord your God and bow down before him. Then you and the Levites and foreigners among you should rejoice, because the Lord your God has given good things to you and your family. Bring a tenth of all your harvest the third year (the year to give a tenth of your harvest). Give it to the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows so that they may eat in your towns and be full. Then say to the Lord your God, “I have taken out of my house the part of my harvest that belongs to God, and I have given it to the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows. I have done everything you commanded me; I have not broken your commands, and I have not forgotten any of them. I have not eaten any of the holy part while I was in sorrow. I have not removed any of it while I was unclean, and I have not offered it for dead people. I have obeyed you, the Lord my God, and have done everything you commanded me. So look down from heaven, your holy home. Bless your people Israel and bless the land you have given us, which you promised to our ancestors—a fertile land.” Today the Lord your God commands you to obey all these rules and laws; be careful to obey them with your whole being. Today you have said that the Lord is your God, and you have promised to do what he wants you to do—to keep his rules, commands, and laws. You have said you will obey him. And today the Lord has said that you are his very own people, as he has promised you. But you must obey his commands. He will make you greater than all the other nations he made. He will give you praise, fame, and honor, and you will be a holy people to the Lord your God, as he has said.
Steve Webb 3:33
Deuteronomy, chapter 27. Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Keep all these commandments that I give you today. When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the Lord your God is giving you, set up some large stones and coat them with plaster. Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. And when you have crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I command you today, and coat them with plaster. Build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any iron tool on them. Build the altar of the Lord your God with fieldstones and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God. Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the Lord your God. And you shall write very clearly all the words of this law on these stones you have set up.” Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, “Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the Lord your God. Obey the Lord your God and follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.” On the same day Moses commanded the people: When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali. The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice: “Cursed is anyone who makes an idol—a thing detestable to the Lord, the work of skilled hands—and sets it up in secret.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who dishonors their father or mother.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his father’s wife, for he dishonors his father’s bed.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who has sexual relations with any animal.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who sleeps with his mother-in-law.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who kills their neighbor secretly.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” “Cursed is anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out.”
Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”
Steve Webb 6:44
Deuteronomy, chapter 28. “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God: Your towns and your fields will be blessed. Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed. Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed. “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord God, and they will stand in awe of you. “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow other gods and worship them. “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you: Your towns and your fields will be cursed. Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed. “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed. “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away. “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you. “You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you. You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them. A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment. You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you. The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot. “The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone! You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you. “You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops. You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity. Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops. “The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker. They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail! “If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed. These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and all your descendants forever. If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you. “The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death. They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you. “The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you. The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter. She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. “If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God, then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick. He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed. Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God. “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive. In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”
Steve Webb 16:03
In today’s reading, the children of Israel are about to enter into the Promised Land, but God has a message for them through Moses. Over and over again, in these chapters, we read the word “obey” or a variation on that command. And in chapter 27, they’re instructed that the first thing they’re to do when they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land is to set up a monument of stones on which they’re to write the entire body of the law and build an altar upon which they’re also to write the law and make burnt offerings. Why did God have them do this? Because God knew how forgetful the people were. The monument was placed there as a reminder of their crossing over the Jordan River into the land promised to them. The law was written as a reminder. The altar was a reminder. Every time they looked at the monument or the altar, they would remember this day and how God delivered them, how he fulfilled his promise, and what was required of them to continue to receive his blessings. God knows how forgetful people are. Over and over and over again, he reminds his people of the importance of obedience. He reminds them of the promises of blessings when they obey and the curses promised if we don’t. Of course, God knew before the foundation of the world that men and women would never be able to obey the law. And he was not surprised when Adam and Eve sinned. He was not surprised when no one was able to obey the law. So why did God even give the law if no one would be able to keep it? Paul gives us the reason in Romans 7:7. He said, “…I would not have known sin except through the law…” So the law was given in order that we would know what sin is. And before God even began the creation of the universe, he had a plan to save us. Jesus was always in the plan. He was not Plan B. As we read in John chapter 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it… “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” So in the very beginning, Jesus was a part of the plan to save you and to save me. Jesus is the Word. He was in the beginning. He is the only way that my transgressions, my sins, and yours, can be forgiven. The law was given to show our need. Jesus came to fulfill the need. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Beloved, we are no different than the people who crossed over the Jordan River. We are forgetful. That’s why he gave us the Bible. That’s why it’s important to be faithful and purposeful about gathering with God’s people. That’s why we’re encouraged in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing. We don’t do these things to earn salvation but to remember to stay close to God. We can’t earn salvation. Salvation is a gift given to us when we invite Jesus into our lives as our Savior and our Lord. He gives this gift because of grace or undeserved favor. What do you think? Let me hear from you. Send a boostagram or call the Lifespring Family Hotline or go to the comments page or write an email. Tomorrow will be History Tuesday. We’ll complete the book of Nehemiah with the reading of chapters 10 through 13.
Steve Webb 19:50
As always, I invite your comments and your questions. Send a boostagram using a modern podcast app, or call the Lifespring Family Hotline at +1-951-732-8511. Or if you have a praise report or a prayer request, and remember our next one won’t be until this coming Sunday, but if you have one go to prayer.lifespringmedia.com. You’ll find an easy-to-fill-out form there. And if you want to remain anonymous, you can tell me that on the form. If you have a comment or a question for me, go to comment.lifespringmedia.com or send an email to me at st***@*************ia.com.
Steve Webb 20:32
Thanks to the team: Sister Denise, Michael Haner, Scott Snider, Jason Paschall, and Sister Brittaney. Jason Paschall did today’s show art. Beloved, thank you for inviting me to be a part of your day today. I don’t take it for granted. Shall we do it again tomorrow? Can’t wait. Until then, may God bless you richly. My name is Steve Webb. Bye.
Announcer 20:55
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Jingle 21:04
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
