Invite your attention tonight to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 28. Deuteronomy chapter 28. Here in Deuteronomy chapter 28, Start reading in verse one. And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kind, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The heading on the top of my page says, Blessings for Obedience. We ought to be obedient. In life, there's a lot of obedience that we would be wise to do. What obedience could possibly be more important than obedience to God? Now listen to what our text said. All God's blessings can be had by observing to do all His commandments, by hearkening to Him and doing all His commandments. If we do this, we can have all His blessings. Now let me say this a different way. If we do not fully obey all of God's commandments, We will not be blessed of God. Won't be. Now we're about to observe the Lord's table. We're about to do this in remembrance of him, our Lord, our Savior. Why? Because we cannot obey God's commandments. And we need a savior. God has revealed to us in mercy that we cannot earn his blessings. We cannot merit his favor. It said, hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Who here's done that? Not a one of us. We're flesh, we can't. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear. God's gotta give the ear. We're flesh, we can't enter into, we can't understand the things of God, unless the arm of the Lord is pleased to reveal these things to us, as you just read. We can't observe and do God's commandments. God's commandments are holy. We're sinful, we're sinners. It's not in us to keep his commandments. We're contrary, our flesh is contrary opposed to God and everything about God. These verses, these verses that we just read, we're gonna look at them for just a minute. They declare somebody. I don't look to these verses to see something for me to do by which to obtain God's blessings. I look to these verses by God's grace, seeing Christ. And I pray we all will. You see, there is just one, who has hearkened diligently unto the voice of the Lord God, and it's not us. There is just one who has observed and done all of God's commandments. There's just one. There is just one whom, as the end of verse one says, the Lord has set on high above all nations of the earth. There is just one blessed man, and that's the God-man, Christ Jesus, our Lord. We do this, we observe this table in remembrance of Him because He is our salvation. We heard it so plainly this morning, salvation's of the Lord. He is our salvation. Here's the commands, hearken. hear, believe. In order for us to hear, he enables us to hear. He is the author and finisher of the faith that hears and believes and calls on him. Observe and do. Christ came to do what we could never do for ourselves. We could never obey God. We could never obtain God's blessing. But Christ came and he did it for us. He kept God's holy law. He magnified it and made it honorable for us. And by the faith He gives us, we establish the law in Him. He did it for us. He's the Lord, our righteousness. What righteousness do we have? Him. There's just one. He's it. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Him. Right there again, verse one, He set thee on high above all nations on the earth. We're seated in heavenly places in Christ, with Christ, right now. and I love to know it. Look here at verse three again. Blessed shalt thou be in the city and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kind and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. Don't you desire to be blessed? How many times do we just read the word blessed, blessed, blessed? I wanna be blessed of God, I really do. Now, again, we read this and we think of ourselves and we see something to do, don't we? Can't help it. This is speaking of Christ. Oh my God, open our eyes to see Christ here. May God cause us to look away from self and what must I do to be saved and look to him who saved us completely. Now, the heading on the other page I'm looking at here says the curses for disobedience. If we try to save ourselves, if we leave this place, if we die trusting in ourselves that we've saved ourselves, this will no doubt be our end. Cursed. Not blessed. You know, it saddens me. I know so many people who are just steeped and lost in religion. And I'll ask them how they're doing, and they'll say, blessed. And I think, I really hope you are. I really hope you are. Because the fact of the matter is, many think they're blessed when they're not. I don't want that for us. I don't want that for anybody. I want us to know Christ and be saved. I want us to see that all the blessings are in Him, that He is the blessing. He's the blessed one. Now, let's quickly consider Christ. and his body, okay? We're gonna look at a couple scriptures and I'm gonna quote some scripture, okay? A body was prepared for him. A body prepared for God. Came in the likeness of man. He was born of a virgin. He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of his coming. He came and he went about doing good every day everywhere he went. He healed all manner of sickness. He knew no sin. I'll tell you what else he did. He hearkened diligently unto the voice of the Lord God. He came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him. From a young age, he said, I must be about my father's business. From his youth, his face was set like a flint towards the cross. That's why he came. Christ, he observed, he kept every single commandment. Every single one. And yet, as the appointed hour of his death, ordained by God, appointed by God, as that hour approached, he told his disciples, take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. As our substitute. In agony, our Lord was in the garden, sweating, as it were, great drops of blood. The body of God sweat great drops of blood for his people. Our Savior's precious body that was so beautifully anointed shortly before this was beaten, Marred more than any man, we can't imagine how bad. He was nailed to a cross? God. Crucified between two malefactors, two convicted criminals? Now I really have a hard time entering into this. The body of God Almighty gave up the ghost. How do we explain that? The body of God Almighty was buried in a tomb. God, this is who we're remembering. When we take this bread, we're remembering the body of God, God who came in a body for us, what He endured for us. But I love to know this, on that third glorious day, He arose, He arose victorious. He arose because he got the job done. He accomplished something. Everything he came to do, he accomplished a blessing for his people. The blessing. You see why we do this in remembrance of him? If it was about us, why would we even bother? It's not about us. It's all about him. Now, I want to show you something wonderful here. This is what led me to this text. Look at verse four again. Deuteronomy 28 verse four. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body. Now again, this is speaking of Christ. Blessed shall be the fruit of Christ's body. Now the word fruit here means offspring. The fruit of the body of Christ. is His offspring, His children, His elect people. Scripture's worded a few different ways. The offspring of God, the seed which the Lord hath blessed, the children of the living God. And I love every single one of those. Oh, to be one of God's children. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter two. Hebrews chapter two. Verse nine. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. Now, we know that Christ did not die for all mankind. I don't feel the need to elaborate on this because the very next verses are gonna show that to us very clearly. Look at verse 10. For it became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee, and again I will put my trust in him, and again behold I and the children which God hath given me. Do you not just adore that? He said, many sons. He said, my brethren. Christ is the firstborn among many brethren. the children which God hath given me." God gave Christ children. That's who he came to save. That's for whom he tasted death, his children, his children. That is the fruit of our Lord's body, his children. That's the reason he came and suffered and bled and died. was for his children, to bring many sons to glory, to be the captain of their salvation, to make us one with him. That's why he came. As we take this bread and may God enable us to truly remember him, you remember that. You remember why he came. We just sang the song, how can it be, how can it be that God should love a soul like me? Honestly, how can it be? That he in tenderness would come and seek us? To be with him, his spotless bride? We're his children and we're his bride. The father chose a bride for his son. If we're blessed, it's because of Christ. It's because of his hearkening diligently unto God. It's because of His perfect obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. It's because of Him and Him alone. Because His body was broken for us. Because His body was broken for us. His blessed, holy, perfect, pure, spotless body was broken for us. We, the fruit of His body, shall be forever blessed. And nothing can ever change that. We can't mess it up because He hath perfected us forever. Amen. Let's pray.