Introduction
Back in 1994, as civil war was wreaking havoc in Burundi, a nurse walked into the hospital lavatories and spotted something in one of the toilets. It was moving. It was a newborn and premature baby girl who had been left abandoned, but miraculously, she was still alive. The only reason she didn’t drown is that her neck was caught in the U-bend of the toilet bowl.
The nurse fished her out, cleaned her up, and contacted a woman called Chrissie Chapman, who was the only person in Bujumbura taking in abandoned babies or orphans at the time. Chrissie took this baby in when she was five days old and gave her the most beautiful name, the only name to adequately capture what her little life embodied: Grace.
This precious baby girl, just 5 lbs in weight, was put on antibiotics as a preventative measure because her severed umbilical cord had been in contact with the toilet water. We will never know, but it seems likely that these antibiotics, due to their high dose, were what led to Grace losing any sense of hearing.
Months later, a specialist diagnosed her with profound deafness, and there was nothing that could be done. Can you imagine a more cursed start to life? Thrown away down a toilet and with a life-defining disability...
I’ll come back to that story later because it has a remarkable twist. But our world is both rich in blessings and blighted by curses, and that is what I’m going to be talking about today.
So far in this Before the Cross series we have seen four prophetic pictures of Christ’s afflictions for us from the first four books of the Old Testament. The fifth book in the Bible is Deuteronomy, where we find yet another prefiguring of the cross.
If you’ve ever read the Bible through, first of all, well done for getting past Leviticus; it’s not an easy read as we noted two weeks ago. But secondly, you may have noticed that when you get to Deuteronomy, it often duplicates, sometimes almost word-for-word, what you’ve already just read in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.
And you may have asked yourself why? Why does God repeat himself in this way? To answer that question, we need to travel back in time to the world in which Deuteronomy was written. We would have to set our Time Machine to somewhere around the year 1250 B.C. If we could do that, what would we see?
We would see that for four decades, God’s people have been going nowhere, round and round in circles in the Sinai desert. It’s nothing to do with the fact that the men didn’t ask for directions either. The Bible tells us that the reason it has taken the Israelites 40 years to complete a 12-day journey is stubborn unbelief. Unbelief literally gets you nowhere.
But now, finally, at the end of those 40 years, God’s people are camped on the plains of Moab, on the east bank of the River Jordan, beyond which lies the land flowing with milk and honey that God has promised to give them. Only three people who experienced the dramatic and miraculous escape from Egypt through the Red Sea 40 years earlier are still alive; Moses, Joshua and Caleb.
Everyone else who fled from Pharaoh at the first Passover has since died in the wilderness. So we’re looking at an almost entirely new nation. And Moses, a very old man now, knows that soon, in a matter of a few days, this young generation will, at last, take possession of this promised land - and he, Moses, is not going to be one of them. God has revealed to him that he has about a week to live.
So Moses spends the last days of his life writing down and explaining God’s word all over again for this new generation. This is what we call Deuteronomy. Deutero meaning “second”, and nomos meaning “law,” it’s the second law. Because it's a repeat of all that stuff in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers – except that this time it is for an entirely new audience. And that explains why you have a sense of deja vu when you read it immediately after what comes before.
The key message of Deuteronomy therefore is this; every generation has to discover God for itself. The faith of those who lived before us is not sufficient to get us through. It is not enough to say, “well, my dad was a deacon in the Baptist Church.” Or, “my grandmother was on the flower rota at Saint Hilda’s.” Or “our family is staunch Methodist going back three generations.” Listen, you are truly blessed if you come from a Christian family; that’s the best start in life anyone can have. But at the end of the day, you cannot inherit someone else’s relationship with God; it has to be your own.
If you’re a parent, the most valuable gift you can give to your children is to model and live out an authentic relationship with God through Jesus Christ. They see that. They see that your faith is fake, when doesn’t seem important to you. They see when it does, when it is real. Pray that your children will know and love the Lord for themselves. Show them a life of faith that they will want to emulate. This legacy is more precious than anything you can leave in your will. But, remember, in the end, you can only hand on your faith so far. They have to embrace it for themselves.
Blessings and Curses
I started by mentioning blessings and curses, because this is one the main themes of Deuteronomy. Obedience leads to a blessed life. And disobedience leads to a cursed life. But God is always more eager to bless than to curse; the word, “curse”, appears 31 times in Deuteronomy. But the word “bless” appears 44 times. God is a God who delights to bless. His plan and purpose are that we flourish under his blessing.
The very first words spoken over Adam and Eve after God gives them life and breath are words of blessing. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number’.”
When God calls Abraham - a pivotal moment in salvation history - he says, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
When God establishes the priesthood, foreshadowing Jesus as the perfect bridge between God and us, he says to the priests, “This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.”
The first Psalm begins with blessing. “Blessed is the one… whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on it day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.”
The first recorded public teaching in Jesus’ ministry is the Sermon on the Mount - and the very first word on his lips is, “blessed.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus went on to say, “bless those who curse you…”
On and on it goes; this golden thread of blessing throughout the Bible continues until the very last chapter of the very last book which says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city [of God].”
You need to know that God is for you, he wants you to thrive. He is eager to bless you. This is his plan. But the whole truth is that God does not only bless, because the entry of sin into the world in Genesis 3 resulted in his curse.
Back in the nineteen-seventies, there was a church in West London, which displayed posters on its public billboard to attract the attention of passers-by. One notice carried the following message: Are you tired of sin? Then come inside. But regrettably, there was too much blank space on the poster and underneath someone had scribbled, “If not, call Raunchy Rick on 337269.”
The devil loves us to think that sin is great, and that hell is where all the fun is. It’s a lie. Sin alienates us from God. It never satisfies. It messes up your life. It’s addictive, and wearying, and controlling, and energy-sapping. Sin is slow death by strangulation. It brings you under a curse that you feel you can’t get free from.
One of the curses in Deuteronomy comes in chapter 27 and it says this; Cursed is anyone who does not uphold all the words of this law [that is the law of Moses, summarised in the Ten Commandments] by carrying them out.”
That’s a problem, because James 2.10 says, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”
Imagine keeping all God’s law, all your life, except just one time you covet someone’s dress, or you take a pen home from work, or you tell a little lie – it’s the same as if you’ve broken all the commandments. Does that seem unfair?
Here’s how it works: imagine you buy a beautiful white carpet for your living room, and on the first day, someone spills a bottle of ink on it. They might say, “oh, what’s one small ink stain? Get over it. 99% of the carpet is fine.”
But all you can see when you walk into your living room is that ugly ink mark on your beautiful, expensive carpet. When you try and clean it, it just makes the splodge worse. The carpet is ruined.
Or imagine someone serves you an omelette made with 6 eggs, one of which was left out in the sun for a week. But the other five were fine! “And look, what’s one tiny dose of salmonella or e-coli? It’s microscopic, it’s no big deal.” Yes, it is a big deal, you’ve got food poisoning! Your whole body feels terrible!”
If I pull just one pearl off a necklace, all the other beads fall to the floor. And in exactly the same way, just one sin in my life breaks friendship with God, and it shuts the door to heaven, and it puts me under a curse. It’s a big problem and it needs a big solution. Thankfully, there is one and curiously it comes in the form of another curse in Deuteronomy. Chapter 21, verses 22-23. Here’s what it says:
“If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse.”
Primitive societies used to expose the bodies of anyone guilty for a capital offence after their death; it was the strongest expression of reproach and disgrace to convey the shame of the crime committed. It was designed to dissuade the living from repeating offences like murder and rape themselves.
But this scripture shows how God preserved the dignity of even the worst criminals by insisting that their corpses be removed from public disgrace and buried before nightfall.
It’s a very obscure law, for a very different kind of society to our own. But even as recently as the French Revolution people used to display severed heads on spikes. They still do such things in places like Syria today. 3,500 years earlier, God mandated respect for the dead and dignified burial customs.
This strange law might well have got forgotten in one of the least read, least obviously relevant parts of the Bible, were it not for the fact that the Apostle Paul picks it up in his letter to the Galatians many years later. As always with Paul, his logic is very tightly packed together, so you need to concentrate, but here’s the passage:
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.”
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
So in other words, Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying, “No one ever manages to go through the whole of their life with a perfect record.” Let me try and illustrate that…
There are two men sitting next to each other on an airplane, let’s call them Bill and Ben. Eventually, they ask each other what they do for a living. Bill says he is a businessman. Ben says he is a pastor. As soon Ben says that, Bill squirms uncomfortably in his seat.
But then Bill says, “Well, as it happens, I’m a Christian too!” Ben says “Well, that’s great. What church do you go to?” “Oh,” says Bill, “errr, my wife goes to… what’s it called… well, she goes there every week and I go with her at Christmas and Remembrance. I am a patriotic and law-abiding, good person. When it comes to my professional life, I have a reputation of being honest.”
In fact, Bill thinks he is an upstanding citizen and an excellent role model. In his mind, can barely put a cigarette paper between his moral goodness and God himself. So pastor Ben says, “That’s fascinating. Tell me, would you be interested in me explaining to you what the Bible says about all this?” and Bill says “Yes, that would be great.”
So Ben draws a ladder on a napkin. He says, “Let’s call this the Ladder of Goodness. We will put God on the top rung and that makes sense. He is a perfect God. He is a holy God. At the bottom of the ladder, you have axe murderers and terrorists.” He turns to Bill and says, “Where do you think you should put yourself on this ladder? Where do you think you fit? But before you commit yourself, let’s put some other names on the ladder.” Bill says, “OK then.”
Ben says, “Who would be, to your mind, the holiest, best, most morally upright Christian in your entire lifetime?” Bill thinks for a minute and says, “Well, that would have to be Mother Teresa, hands down.” Ben says, “I wouldn’t disagree.” I think Mother Teresa was fantastic. But when you read her writings or listen to her interviews, you find surprisingly that she did not speak highly of herself at all. She talked about how impatient she was, how angry she got, how hard she was on her colleagues. I think she would put herself about… here. Under halfway down!
They come up with a few other names. Billy Graham, Pope Francis, I don’t know - Cliff Richard, Jenny Coltman… But each time, Ben talks about what they have said about their own unworthiness. “Pope Francis, for example, when they approached him about becoming Pope, he said, Don’t pick me, I am a sinful man.” Billy Graham in his autobiography, talks about his many failings and weaknesses. So they put a few more crosses on the ladder.
Then Pastor Ben turns and says, “Now, where are you going to put yourself on that ladder? Mother Teresa is about halfway down and Billy is underneath her and I put myself right down here near the bottom. Where are you?”
There it is, in visual form, the curse that falls upon everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law. Bill says, “I’m screwed.” Ben says, “That’s right! So am I! We all are. That’s the point. The Bible says, all have sinned and fall short. But God has bridged the gap between his infinitely beautiful moral perfections and our undeniable moral wretchedness by giving his Son.”
“Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Jesus took the full deadly curse of that huge gap upon himself on the cross.
John Stott says, “To the unbelieving Jew it was inconceivable that the Messiah should die ‘on a tree’, that is, under the curse of God. To the unbelieving Gentile it was ludicrous to suppose that a god, one of the immortals, should die.”
The mangled body of a crucified man is still today a massive stumbling block for many. Some laugh. Others feel uncomfortable talking about it. Most people in the UK ignore it as irrelevant.
Ending
But when Jesus died, he took upon himself the full weight of every ugly sin, of the world’s shame and fallenness, of generations and generations of ingrained wickedness and the curse it casts on every man, woman and child and he drank the cup of God’s justified wrath against sin until it was dry.
And because he did, he set in motion a cycle of grace to bring blessing on our cursed world.
As I come towards the end, I invite you to marvel with me at how Christ becoming a curse for us, releases a tidal wave of blessing. I began by talking about a newborn little girl called Grace with her cursed start to life. Found barely alive, remember, thrown away down a toilet by her mother and left profoundly deaf.
When Grace was 6 months old, a visiting pastor to her orphanage asked if he could pray over her. No one objected, I mean why would you? So he put oil on her ears to anoint her in the name of the Lord. And he prayed for her healing. For the next three days, if anything, it seemed to get worse. Grace screamed, non stop, every minute she was awake. Nobody knew what to do.
It was only when someone accidentally slammed a door and Grace suddenly jolted that they realized her tears and screams were because she had been healed and could now hear everything was going on, which she found frightening because she wasn’t used to it.
This is Grace today, telling her story on YouTube. Grace has matured into a fun-loving, intelligent and articulate young lady. She finished school with excellent grades and was awarded a university scholarship. She is now 31 and she is full of faith. She knows that God has big plans for her life.
The power of her story has impacted many, many people, and she is playing a massive part in Burundi’s healing and transformation. This is what our God does; he takes rejected, afflicted, blighted, cursed humanity, left to die in filth and he restores, heals and beautifies it by becoming himself rejected, afflicted, blighted and cursed.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
May the Lord sever the ties of curses and open up heaven's door to release his blessing as we respond to his word now…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 30 March 2025.
