Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Scripture is Micah 6, verses 13-15. “Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins. Thou shalt eat but not be satisfied, and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee. Thou shalt take hold but shalt not deliver. And that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword. Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap. Thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil, and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.”

Heat up here. Heat up here. Well, in the context of Micah chapter 6, we have the courtroom convened—the covenant lawsuit brought by God’s prophet against the nation, the covenant nation. We have gone through the charges—violation of God’s covenant law, the Ten Commandments. We had specifications of charges last week, and this morning we come to judgment, the verdict of the court and the specific judgments that God will call forth upon the people for their sins. Chapter 6 concludes with a summary verse in verse 16, which we’ll take next week to deal with.

We mentioned last week that the specifications of the charges include God talking about the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked. And we said then that it frequently appears to us that the wicked do prosper. And David, of course, in the Psalms frequently asked the question, why do the wicked prosper? And indeed, in Psalm 73, which we’ll read responsibly in the next week or two, David—or the psalmist—states that he had come close to falling. Psalm 73:2 he says, “But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had well nigh slipped, for I was envious of the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm.” And so it can appear to us that there may be much, and there undoubtedly is in this country right now, many people having treasures of wickedness for violation of God’s covenant law and seeming to prosper for a season.

And this morning, I think the answer is given to that and why we shouldn’t envy the wicked as it were and hope to have their treasures because their treasures avail them no satisfaction. And that’s kind of the general theme this morning as we go through these judgments. The judgments begin with what I believe is a summary statement in verse 13, which we’ll deal with last in the chronology of this morning’s talk.

After the summary statement in verse 13, we then in verses 14 and 15 have seven specific things—phrases mentioned, seven specific judgments or curses. And some people have referred to these as futility curses. A man named Dr. Hiller wrote an article entitled “Treaty Curses in the Old Testament Prophets,” and that article was cited by Leslie Allen in his commentary on Micah. He refers to these as futility curses.

And indeed in Deuteronomy 28 and also Leviticus 26, most of us are familiar that those passages contain blessings and cursings. And many of the cursings are specifically futility curses. They say that you will futilely try to do certain things and they won’t come to pass. And so we have then a set of seven of these futility curses following the summary statement in verse 13. And I think that really you’ve got three groups of these futility curses—two, two, and then three—making a total of seven curses. You could look at that as a double witness to each of those specific groups. The first group having a double witness, the second group of curses having a double witness, and the third group having a triple witness. And I think that’s the right way to look at these. And we’ve broken out our outline this morning to talk about that.

I just wanted to mention briefly first before we get into this—just so we make sure we keep your attention intact—that these are relevant to us. Many churches today do not affirm the relevancy of curses today in the land. They said that was just for Old Testament Israel. Has nothing to do with New Testament times. And we won’t belabor the point. We could spend a lot of time looking at specific verses. But suffice it to say that even a cursory reading of the New Testament reveals many such curses found in the New Testament as well.

Of course, Jesus’s woe oracles against the Pharisees were specifically curses. He would give blessings and he would give cursings. “Blessed are they,” the Beatitudes. And then he turned around here in the book of Matthew to give a whole series of woe oracles against those who violate his word, and that’s a New Testament teaching certainly. Death is the ultimate curse. And indeed, we have a case of two people—Ananias and Sapphira—in the New Testament who are cursed unto death. And it’s interesting to note, by the way, in reference to the specific subject last week and this week: if you think through it, those people were killed because they affirmed a short ephah to God and tried to count it a full ephah. They didn’t reveal the true price. They tried to give God the short end of the stick, and they were then cursed to death for that. Again, an economic violation of God’s covenant and a curse of death.

The book of Revelation is full of curses. We’re going to go through these—the seven letters to the seven churches—as our call to worship over the next few weeks. And you’ll see in that several times repeated—specifically to churches that Jesus will come, he’ll judge them, he’ll curse them. He’ll put people upon beds of sickness, cause their children to fail, etc.—these sorts of things. And so there’s plenty of that as well.

Additionally, of course, Corinthians tells us that violators of communion are cursed. They made sick and die. And that’s one of the specific things this morning—sickness to come upon people. And so we have the affirmation of sickness as a cursing upon those who break God’s covenant—special covenant sign of communion.

Jude 1, verses 11-16, speak about people that break into the feasts of charity, the wicked people. In verse 11, he repeats Jesus’s woe oracle: “Woe unto them. Cursed be them,” in other words. And he goes on to specify how they’ve gone after the way of Balaam and their rage. In verse 13, they’re raging waves of the sea. We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes—how the wicked are like waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars.

And then he says in verse 14: “Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these violators of the New Testament church and the communion feast and the truths of the New Testament. Enoch spoke of these saying, ‘Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of the saints to execute judgment upon all and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly—which the ungodly have committed—and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against them. They are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts.’”

And that should be a reminder to us that murmuring and complaining may seem like a small thing, but I’m sure that all of us are very actively trying to teach our children not to do that and trying to enforce that in our own lives as well. Tremendous sin calling for God’s curse in the book of Jude.

So, just so to get your attention: these things are not some sort of abstract curses that were only had relevance in the Old Testament. Don’t mean anything to us today. No, indeed they’re very important for us today, and we should pay attention to them very diligently to make sure that we don’t suffer these curses. And when we do—that we repent of our sin.

It seems that many churches, churchmen, pastors today—people that have professed themselves to be Christians in this land—are more like Christian deists at this point in time. It’s like God has set up these natural cause and effect and he’s not here anymore until the final judgment occurs. When they look at AIDS, for instance, and say, “Well, it’s just the end working of what they’ve done. It’s not really God cursing these people.” When you have such an obvious example, it’s no wonder that they miss the other examples—the economic cursings that God brings upon the land as well.

But in any event, the scriptures are clear that cursings do apply in the New Testament as well. And so this is important for us to hear and see what things will happen in our land should these laws that they violated be violated in our land as well.

The first set of two of these—woe, these futility curses—I’ve labeled the futility of nourishment. In verse 14: “Thou shalt eat but not be satisfied. Thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee.” Now the first of those two—”Thou shalt eat but not be satisfied”—is pretty straightforward. Although you have to remember there that there are maybe reasons why you’ll eat and not be satisfied. For instance, in Leviticus 26, he refers to these as futility curses.

And indeed in Deuteronomy 28, and also in Leviticus 26, most of us are familiar that those passages contain blessings and cursings. And many of the cursings are specifically futility curses. They say that you will futilely try to do certain things and they won’t come to pass. And so we have then a set of seven of these futility curses following the summary statement in verse 13.

Many churches today do not affirm the relevancy of curses today in the land. They say that was just for Old Testament Israel. Has nothing to do with New Testament times. And we won’t belabor the point. We could spend a lot of time looking at specific verses. But suffice it to say that even a cursory reading of the New Testament reveals many such curses found in the New Testament as well.

Of course, Jesus’s woe oracles against the Pharisees were specifically curses. He would give blessings and he would give cursings. “Blessed are they,” the Beatitudes. And then he turned around later in the book of Matthew to give a whole series of woe oracles against those who violate his word. And that’s a New Testament teaching. Certainly death is the ultimate curse. And indeed, we have a case of two people—Ananias and Sapphira—in the New Testament who are cursed unto death.

And it’s interesting to note, by the way, in reference to the specific subject last week and this week, as you think through it, those people were killed because they affirmed a short ephah to God and tried to count it a full ephah. They didn’t reveal the true price. They tried to give God the short end of the stick, and they were then cursed to death for that. Again, an economic violation of God’s covenant and a curse of death.

The book of Revelation is full of curses. We’re going to go through these—the seven letters to the seven churches—as our call to worship over the next few weeks. And you’ll see in that several times in speaking on this verse I think brings up some very appropriate points. However, he says the following commenting on this verse:

Another mode is adopted by which he can consume men with want, namely when he breaks the staff of bread, when he takes away from bread its nourishing virtue so that it can no more support men whatever quantity they may swallow. And this is what experience proves. If only we have the eyes to observe the judgments of God. We now see the meaning of this clause when he says, “Thou shalt eat and not be satisfied.” As though he said, “I can indeed whenever it pleases me, deprive you of all food. The earth itself will become barren at my command. But that you may more clearly understand that your life is in my hand, a good supply of fruit shall be produced, but it shall not satisfy you. You shall then perceive that bread is not sufficient to support you. For by eating you shall not be able to derive from bread any nourishment.”

And Calvin, I think, is correct that it does say they’re going to be able to eat, but they won’t receive nourishment. This same thing is kind of repeated in Job 20. Verse 14 of Job 20 says, “Yea, speaking of the wicked, now his meat in his bowels is turned. It is the gall of asps within him. He has swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again. God shall cast them out of his belly. He shall suck the poison of asps, the viper’s tongue shall slay him. He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter. That which he labored for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down. According to his substance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice therein. Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor, because he hath violently taken away a house which he has builded not. Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly. He shall not save of that which he desired.”

Now that important verse there—the context of all that then is that the rich man gains riches in an ungodly fashion. He has to give them back. He has to make restitution. He won’t be able to take advantage of those riches. But specifically in verse 14, the picture given is that his meat in his bowels is turned. It is the gall of asps within him.

And so when you eat food and don’t acknowledge God as the giver of it and the source of our life, frequently God will take that very food—as the picture given here and again in Micah—and yet give you no—you’ll drive no satisfaction or nourishment from that food. We have to count on God’s blessing that food to our bodies to strengthen and nourish us.

And Calvin recognized that and said that God frequently—what he calls—breaks the staff of life, takes away the nourishment value of the bread. In any event, the important point that’s stressed in Micah in this specific verse is not the means whereby the end is produced. The end is: you won’t get nourishment from what you do eat. And the means are many in which God can use. He can take food out of your mouths through enemies, locusts, plagues, whatever. Or he can take the food that you’ve actually gathered through your wickedness and turn it to poison or the venom of vipers within your stomach.

Now, you know, I know that there’s been a lot of intestinal flu lately, and I don’t think it is necessarily stretching the point to suggest that God can—I’m not saying that all intestinal flu finds its fulfillment in these verses, but certainly that is one way which God will cause you not to be nourished from the food you eat. You’ll not be able to digest it properly. The point is that God is in control of this entire process and that God makes futile the wicked’s attempts to nourish themselves through the ingestion of food. And that would fit nicely with the second half of that verse as well.

“Thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee.” Calvin has a different interpretation of that passage again. However, I said that some people think the second half of that—”thy casting down is in the midst of thee”—refers to children, the failure to bring forth children and to be nourishing as it were children. But Calvin thinks it also can refer to depression. He says God then adds: “And thy dejection shall be in the midst of thee.” That is, “Though no man from without disturb or afflict thee, yet thou shalt pine away with intestine evils.” This is the real meaning, and interpreters have not sufficiently considered what the prophet means through too much negligence.

But the passage ought to be noticed, for the prophet, after having threatened a famine—not from want, but from the secret curse of God—now adds, “Thy dejection shall be in the midst of thee. That is, though I should rouse against thee no enemies, though evidence of my wrath should not appear so as to be seen in the distance, yea, yea, though no one should disturb thee, yet thy dejection, thy calamity, thy depression, we might say, shall be in the midst of thee, as though it was cleaving to thy bowels. For thou shalt pine away through a hidden malady, when God shall pronounce his curse on thee.”

Now, Calvin doesn’t cite Deuteronomy 28, but again, in Deuteronomy 28, we have that as part of the curses of God. He causes fear to come upon people. When it’s daytime, they wish it’s night. When it’s nighttime, they wish it’s day. And that doesn’t speak of any necessarily real person out there causing them fear. But God has struck them with fear in their mind and in their bowels, as it were, as Calvin would say.

In any event, this first couplet that I think refers primarily to the futility of nourishment apart from the blessing of God. Now, the scriptures say the reverse as well. They say that with God you have nourishment even in the midst of a famine. One specific citation is Psalm 37, verses 19. “Thou shalt not be ashamed in the evil time. And in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.” So God gives us nourishment even when our food supply is meager. He can, as it were, add nourishment to whatever food he provides in his providence, though it be small.

And indeed that way, God also reminds us that these secondary means that he normally uses to exact either his curses or his blessings are not in and of themselves the source of that nourishment. He is. And so these verses are quite important—the way that Micah has phrased them—to get that impact that God is stressing the end result. He’s not stressing the means by which he’ll carry those things out.

The second couplet is much the same way—the futility of guarding. “Thou shalt take hold and shalt not deliver. And that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.” So the idea says that no matter how you interpret the specifics—relative to children or if it’s possessions or if it’s your food supply or whatever—the point is that you’ll take hold, you’ll try to protect whatever you have, but you won’t be able to deliver it. And if you do deliver a small portion of it, that portion God will give over to the sword.

Now, since he uses the term sword there, it’s probable here he’s speaking of one’s family, one’s wife, one’s children, etc., and maybe oneself as well. Of course, he’s saying that if you try to protect your children or your possessions—if we take a broader sense of the term—if you try to guard them from attack, you won’t be successful. And if you think you are successful for a period of time, God will then take away even what small portion you have guarded.

And so the second—rather—set of these two-fold witnesses to futility speaks to futility of being able to guard without God’s special providence involved in that guarding process. And again, he doesn’t say necessarily how that’s going to happen. It seems like here he’s talking about enemy soldiers invading, but that isn’t necessarily the case. It could be internal enemies. It could be even sickness again removing the lives of people. God uses the term sword in a wide variety of fashions throughout the scriptures.

The important thing that he’s stressing here is that the end product—guarding—is effectual with God’s blessing, no matter how meager our efforts may seem to us, when we’ve done everything we could. And they’re ineffectual without God’s blessing, no matter how much we’ve done to prepare for the calamities that may befall us.

Proverbs 3 is an example of again this reverse thing that I’ve talked about—that those who honor God they shall be protected in times of calamity. Proverbs 3, verses 19-26, speaks of those who listen to God. In verse 21: “My son let not them depart from thee—the commandments of God—that is keep sound wisdom and discretion so shall they be life unto thy soul and grace to thy neck. Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble. When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid. Yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet. Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh. For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.”

And so he affirms there in Proverbs 3 the reverse—that though we may not think we’ve been able to in the providence of God have enough secondary means to protect ourselves, yet, if we trust in God and have been obedient to his commandments and been responsible with what he’s given to us, he promises here to add, as it were, grace to what we’ve provided for ourselves and supernaturally take care of us in spite of enemies and other desolations and fears that may come upon us. So we have the same basic thing being worked out there.

And then this third set of futility curses—the last three—refer to the futility of labor. “Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap. Thou shalt tread the olive. But thou shalt not anoint thee with oil, and sweet wine, but shall not drink wine.” Now these three specific elements—grain crops, olives, and then wine—are given in Deuteronomy 28 again, back to the curses of the covenant, in verses 38-40.

And I’ll read from those three verses: “Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field and shall gather but little in for the locust shall consume it.” Verse 39: “Thou shalt plant vineyards and dress them, but shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worms shall eat them.” In verse 40: “Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coast, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil, for thine olive shall cast as fruit.”

Now, we should see similarities and differences to what Micah has drawn out as in other texts of scripture which we could take the time to go through. Those three elements—frequently are put together by God—the failure of the grain harvest in terms of its giving any sustenance to the people, the failure of olives to produce an anointing oil, and the failure of the vineyards to produce wine that causes men’s heart to be glad. Those three things together: wheat, olives, oil—or wheat, oil of olives—and wine.

But there’s a difference, too, isn’t there? Because if you were listening closely, verse 39, for instance, says that you’ll plant vineyards, but you won’t be able to gather the grapes ’cause the worms will eat them. And verse 40 says that you’ll have olive trees, but you won’t have anointing oil because the olives will fall off the trees. But Micah says: “Indeed, you shall tread the olives, you shall tread the sweet wine, but you won’t get the resultant end product. You won’t anoint yourself with oil. You won’t drink the wine.”

So again, Micah is assuming that God will curse the end product of that labor, producing futility of labor, but he isn’t specifying the secondary means. And in fact, he moves away from the secondary means that God describes in Deuteronomy 28. Again, that’s very significant because it means that all of our labors—and maybe we can protect the field from bugs, I mean, we can use DDT or whatever it is—but that will not provide blessing from God apart from his grace. And it will not protect us from God’s curse when his hand is against us.

Very important to recognize that. Allen, in talking about the devastation that comes through these three crops in his commentary, says: “The economy was to grind to a halt. The fresh fruit displayed so lavishly on the market walls among which Micah prophesied would soon be a mocking memory. Cornfields that yesterday had yielded the golden grain on sale today would somehow—or would tomorrow—be spoiled and trampled by enemy boots while casks of oil and wine like those heaped up here and there would fall into enemy hands. Such was the doom that the vendors’ deceitfulness was to unleash.”

Allen assumes that he’s talking here about invasion. And certainly that would account for what Micah describes. You can store up all this olive oil through your treading and your hard work and your labor, and then when God brings the army in, you don’t get it anymore. They get it. But I would suggest that really is again reading something into this that isn’t necessarily there. Although his basic comment is correct. The deceitfulness of the people produces eventually a market that will not produce the fruit of the labor that one would normally expect from the marketplace—and that’s what’s happening here.

Indeed, Jeremiah 12 speaks in a very emphatic way of the curses of those people that labor apart from God. In Jeremiah 12, he says verse 13: “The wicked have sown wheat but they’ll reap thorns. They have put themselves to pain. In other words, they’ve worked so hard they’re all stressed out, as it were. They put themselves to pain. They worked so hard, but they shall not profit. And they shall be ashamed of their revenues because of the fierce anger of the Lord.”

So he says there a very vivid example. They’ll sow wheat, they’ll reap thorns. Obviously, wheat is to be a blessing from God and the food that he gives us, thorns are an obvious indication of God’s curse. And so those people that try to strive and labor to keep the blessings that God has provided through his secondary means and yet don’t rely upon God in that process to add his grace to the process—and so blesses—indeed are cursed by God.

Now I think it’s interesting that—without—I’ve listed the verses there for you. We won’t take the time to go through them, but if you look at those three elements: the grain harvest, sowing and reaping, and then oil, and then wine—you can see a progression that normally God normally says occurs as God blesses a people. They’ll be able to sow wheat and to reap it and to eat. The fruit of their labor will be rewarded with food. The fruit of their labor in of the olives will also be rewarded with the super-added grace of God that the oil of the olive oil indicates to us.

The oil is an indication of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the spirit upon man’s labors. The anointing of oil is seen in that context. Psalm 133 of course talks about the benefits, the blessings of God from Mount Hermon, and describes in terms of a super abundance of oil coming down upon the head of God’s righteous servant. And so the oil represents God’s grace added to our labors and as a result his blessing to us.

It’s also a soothing substance—was frequently used to put upon chafed skin or the body in very harsh environmental conditions. And so that also indicates the soothing of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. And wine of course is given to man by God rather to make the heart glad. And so we have a progression there of the fruits of our labor producing food and health for us, recognition of God’s great blessing upon us through the Holy Spirit indicated in the oil, and the end product being a rejoicing community.

The time of the grape harvest was a rejoicing time. The wine would produce blessing and joy to the people, and they would rejoice in the many blessings that God had given to them. And this whole process then is put under indictment by God for those people that break the covenant law. And indeed is turned on its head. And there’s none of those elements present to the people. They’re cursed. Their labor has become futile in all that they do.

One other aspect I think that is worth talking about just briefly: I’ve given you, I think, some references to the book of Joel there in Joel 1, verses 9-16. The purpose of those references is to show the correlation between oil and wine and the sacrificial system. The end result of that whole process was then to bring offerings to God and acknowledge him in what you’ve done. But Joel 1 talks about how you won’t be able to do that. If you don’t have oil, you don’t have one of the necessary substances for the cereal offering.

In fact, the cereal offering consists of wheat and oil. And you’ll have neither one of those things ’cause God has cursed you. You won’t be able to bring the required offering to God. You can’t even go through the show or formality now of religion. And if you don’t have wine, you don’t have drink offerings and you don’t have libations to give to God.

And so Joel 1 specifically ties that curse to the inability of the people to worship God correctly through his prescribed mechanism. And so their labor is cursed by God. It produces no results. It is futile in that sense. It is not added to with God’s Holy Spirit. It’s futile in that sense. It produces no joy. It’s futile in that sense. And it produces no sacrificial offering to God acknowledging his grace to us because his grace is no longer upon us. His curse is upon those people.

Finally, then we’ll return now to verse 13. Well, we’ll talk for a minute about the loss of satisfaction. Fourth element of these futility curses is the desolating loss of satisfaction. Really, it says specifically at the beginning of these that “you shall eat and not be satisfied.” And I think that really sums up the rest of the curses that we’ve gone through. There’s no satisfaction from our labor. There’s no satisfaction from our attempts at nourishing. And there’s no satisfaction from our attempts at guarding when we have walked contrary to the covenant and in violation of God’s law.

Isaiah 57 says in verse 20: “But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” And these are wicked men that have broken the covenant. And God has said that they will not be satisfied. They’ll be like the sea that has no rest. It has no satisfaction. It has no degree of contentment to it. The waves, if you’ve watched the sea, try to come up to the shore. See the waves starting to work their way up to the shoreline. They come up to the shoreline. As soon as they hit the beach, they move back with what Arnot has described as the hiss of discontent as the wave moves back into the ocean.

And that is a picture of the wicked always striving, never achieving what he wants to achieve, never coming to satisfaction before God, never coming to rest and contentment in what he does, always needing more, more, more.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 says: “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase. This is also vanity. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them. And what good is there to the owner thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes. The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much. But the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.”

Sleep—an indication of rest, satisfaction, contentment with the day’s work. And it says specifically, the laboring man, whether he’s eaten little or much, will sleep sweet because his sleep comes from God. But the rich will not be satisfied and will not be able to allow him to sleep.

Verse 13 of Ecclesiastes 5: “There’s a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. But those riches perish by evil travail in the beginning. And he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand. And as he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor which he may carry away in his hand. And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go. And what profit hath he that hath labored for the wind?”

Laboring for the wind is what people did in the days of Micah and are doing in our day as well. “All his days also he eateth in darkness and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.” It’s interesting then that Ecclesiastes goes on to give the other side of the coin. The one who has gotten wealth and riches and prosperity and things from his own hand apart from God is not blessed by God with satisfaction. But indeed the one that indeed obeys God’s covenant command.

Ecclesiastes goes on to talk about in verse 18 of chapter 5: “Behold that which I have seen, it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he may—that he taketh unto the son and the days of his life which God giveth him—for it is his portion.” And he goes on to talk about how it’s a good thing to eat and to realize the blessings that God has given to us when we recognize God as the source of these things. There is satisfaction in labor and in nourishing and guarding. When we reject God, there is a loss of satisfaction in all that we do.

So, I was reading Ecclesiastes 5 and preparing for this talk. I kept thinking about that old song by I think it was by Joe Tex, Ecclesiastes 5 may well have been the text he could have written it from where he talked about how he couldn’t find one rich man in ten with a satisfied mind. And certainly Ecclesiastes points out the reality of that infrequently. But it’s important to recognize that it’s not just the rich that are here spoken of. As we said before, the indictment was against the whole citizens of the town.

And indeed in Proverbs 27:20, it says that the eyes of man are never satisfied. Apart from God and God’s grace and God’s comfort to us, man himself shares that same fate of the rich man who has gotten his wealth by illegal gains in Ecclesiastes 5. He has no satisfaction. He inherits the wind, as it were. He inherits futility and a lack of satisfaction before God.

But that satisfaction—the loss of satisfaction—is talked about. But it’s also talked about in terms of the devastation that it will eventually come to in the text before us. Chapter—or verse 13 of the chapter—as I said, is a summation of what we’ve already gone through now and it reads: “Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, making thee desolate because of thy sins.”

And so there is a three-fold thing going on here: I’ll make thee sick, in smiting thee, and in making thee desolate because of thy sins. I’ll make you sick. Failure of nourishment—to provide health to your bodies. I’ll smite you. I will hit you. Failure to guard against the curses of God. And the end result of that being made desolate because of one’s sins. And so God goes through this process of judgment with people. And sickness and smiting are all wrapped up together. And again in Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26, those terms for being made sick and smiting also are brought to bear. These are the righteous judgments of a righteous, holy, and just God.

And the progression involved here is a grievous one, moving from sickness, smiting, and then into complete desolation to the people. Complete loss of satisfaction works its way out in the sense of a complete desolation being poured out upon the people who are the subject of God’s wrath.

Isaiah 1, verse 5: “Why should you be stricken anymore? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire. Your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate. It is overthrown by strangers.”

Isaiah—those verses from Isaiah picture, as it were, a nation that has been beaten by God, given corporal discipline, as it were, to the point of death because they refuse to repent. They refuse to come to bow the knee to God. And he says, “Why is it that you want to be hit even more? Turn.” If they don’t turn, God will continue to curse them until their elimination as a people before him. He’ll bring them to desolation.

Isaiah 6:11, Isaiah says: “Then I said I, Lord, how long?” And he answered: “Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant and the houses without man and the land be utterly desolate.”

Desolation is the end product of people who refuse to bow the knee to a sovereign God. Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26—the same progression is pictured. Curse upon curse upon curse, worse, worse, worse—until the land is desolation, until the darkness completely envelops the wicked man.

The phrase from Otto Scott repeated several times lately in the Easy Chair tapes: “God is no buttercup.” These verses point out a God who is against his people, not for them. Now, that’s quite clear in this verse as well as other verses in the scriptures. When people walk in covenant disobedience, God is not with them. He is against them. He is not for them. He is against them.

When we remove ourselves from covenant obedience and we move into rejection of covenant grace, we suffer covenant curses. Today, God is not for most professing Christians in this nation. We talked about the monetary aspects last week. If you go on in Deuteronomy 28—to go on from those three curses of grain, oil, and wine—you look in the next few verses, and he talks about economic curses. The alien within your nation will be risen up higher than you. You’ll borrow. He’ll loan to you. You’ll be the servant. He’ll be the master. And certainly that’s being worked out in our country today—that says that today God is against his church, and we suffer a worse fate if we hear the words of this covenant, recognize their application to our day and age, and yet fail to walk in obedience to them.

If we do that, God then makes us sick instead of nourishing us. God strikes us then instead of guarding us. God makes us desolate, destroyed and consumed in all that we are then—instead of giving us blessing in all that we are. Deuteronomy 28 says the curses shall overtake you. And indeed the blessings are also described as overtaking us from God. In all these things his hand is sovereign.

As I said, these are the just judgments of a righteous God, and they are our judgments without Jesus Christ. One of the aspects of this that you have to keep in mind—you read the curses of the Old Testament—is their fulfillment ultimately in Jesus Christ making our peace.

Isaiah 53:10 says: “The Lord was pleased to crush him and the Lord was pleased to grieve him.” And that word for grieve is the same word for sickness in our text this morning. Jesus Christ took upon himself the full cup of God’s wrath that we’ve talked about this morning—that we might then be recipients of the full cup of God’s blessing.

Men either bow the knee to the only wise Creator and Redeemer of men or they are crushed under his feet. One either accepts the fact that Christ has become the curse for us or one is cursed in his effort to make up his own righteousness before God.

Unless the Lord builds the house, nourishes the family as it were, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchmen wake but in vain. Unless the Lord feeds the people, they eat in vain. Unless the Lord keeps our valuable possessions and the members of our household safe, we can buy Uzis and gold all we want, but it will all be vanity. Unless the Lord blesses the work of our hands, our labor, and input into the means of guarding and nourishing that he has provided, our labor is but blood, sweat, and tears, yielding forth thorns instead of grain.

What does all this mean to us? Well, one thing it certainly means is evaluation is an important part of our lives. We read about the curses of God. We have to keep in mind, as I said, these are not just abstract, faraway sorts of things. We live in a nation today in which these curses are being worked out. We live in a nation that is characterized by a loss of satisfaction. Even they have their anthem: “I can’t get no satisfaction.” And indeed, as the culture continues to experience the lack of satisfaction because God is against them and not for them, they turn increasingly to try to alleviate that somehow through drugs, alcohol, workaholism, whatever it is. Satisfaction is sought for in greater and greater amounts of stimulation to oneself. And yet there’s no satisfaction available through that. And the whole process will end in desolation unless the people turn and come back to God.

Now, that’s the situation we face in this country. That’s the progression that we’re in the midst of now—the economic nourishing, guarding, labor curses of futility that God has placed upon us and that is working itself out. And we have to be able to diagnose those things in our culture. And not only that, but more importantly, we must diagnose those things going on in our lives. And so, when we read about these things, we want to recognize when we experience sickness in our families and failure of profit from our labors.

It doesn’t mean that always is the result of God’s cursing upon us. Of course, there’s that caveat in there. There is a Job, and his certainly his miserable comforters tried to say there’s a one-to-one correlation in that. But, you know, on the other hand, there’s a Job, but there’s far more verses in the scriptures that speak of God’s curse producing these things than there are God’s special work that we don’t know about. There is a Job. There are many pictures of unrighteous men who break the law of God and suffer God’s curse upon them.

So the next time you start to think—when you’re having troubles—that you’re another Job, compare yourself to Job. Read the book of Job. Look at his righteousness before God before his sufferings came upon him. Look at his justice that he exhibited in the gates of the city and how he helped the poor and how he fed them with his bread and protected them and nourished them. Look at his righteousness and then say, “Am I really going to compare myself to that sort of situation? or do I have sin in my life that’s bringing forth this sort of fruit?”

Now again, the balance of course is there. It’s not always the curse of God, but we undoubtedly at least—maybe if there’s somebody here that’s different, I don’t know about, but it seems like the first thing we do with sickness or whatever is count it off to a natural phenomena instead of looking for God’s curse and chastisement upon us. We’ve got to do that.

Haggai 1:5 says: “Now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Is you sow much, you bring in little. You eat, but you have not enough. You drink, but you’re not filled with drink. Ye clothe you, but there is none warm. And he that earns wages earneth wages to put into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.”