Deuteronomy 11:17
or the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you. He will shut the heavens so that there will be no rain, nor will the land yield its produce, and you will soon perish from the good land that the LORD is giving you.
Sermons
Obligations Arising from Personal ExperienceJ. Orr Deuteronomy 11:2-10, 18-22
The Land of PromiseR.M. Edgar Deuteronomy 11:10-17
Valuable Possessions Reserved for the RighteousD. Davies Deuteronomy 11:10-17
Canaan and EgyptJ. Orr Deuteronomy 11:10-18
A Caution Against DeceptionSketches of Four Hundred SermonsDeuteronomy 11:16-17
Religion no HumbugW. Birch.Deuteronomy 11:16-17














I. ITS CONTRAST WITH EGYPT. (Vers. 10, 11.) Not, like Egypt, a land rainless and artificially watered. It had no Nile. It drank in water from the rains of heaven. It was thus in a peculiar way a land dependent upon God. Egypt's fertility depended on God also, but less directly. Its contrivances for irrigation gave it, or might seem to give it, a semi-independence. Palestine was a land, on the contrary, whose peculiar conditions made it dependent for fruitfulness on the direct gift to it of rains from heaven. It was a land requiring a providential adjustment of conditions - a daily care - to make it yield the utmost it was capable of (ver. 12). The truth here figured is that God wills the believer to put his life day by day under his immediate care. The worldly man may desire, and in a measure may be allowed to attain, a position of relative independence of God: he may get (within limits) the ordering of his own plans and ways, and by ingenious contrivances and manipulations of laws of nature, he may think to put himself beyond the power of God's interference with him. But the godly man will neither desire this nor be content with it. He wishes God's eyes to be upon his lot day by day, "from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year." There is, within the ordinary providence of God, a special providence to be recognized over God's people, over Christ's Church, and over nations that adhere to God's ways.

II. THE RESULTS OF THIS CONTRAST TO THE INHABITANTS. (Vers. 13-18.) The directness of the dependence of Canaan on God's care made it, to a greater degree than Egypt could have been, suitable for the operation of a system so intimately bound up with temporal rewards and punishments. Should the people prove obedient, God engages to bless them with rains, and make the land fruitful (vers. 13-16). [But should they disobey, the peculiar conditions of the land put it in his power to scourge them, as he so often did, with drought and famine (1 Kings 17:1; Joel 1.; Haggai 1:10, 11). So he threatens (vers. 16, 17). It is a blessed but a perilous position which God's people are called to occupy. It secures to them unwonted favors, but it exposes them also, if disobedient, to chastisements and punishments of a peculiarly direct and severe kind. The higher the position of nearness to God, the greater the responsibility which that position entails upon who enjoy it. - J.O.

Take heed...that your heart be not deceived.
I. LET US NOT BE DECEIVED IN OUR IDEAS ABOUT GOD.

1. Let us not be deceived in thinking that our heavenly Father is partly good and partly bad.

2. Let not your heart be deceived in thinking that God cannot pardon the one who supposes himself or herself to be the worst. We all do wrong, in some sense or another; and when the thought of our sin weighs down our hearts, let us feel persuaded that God can forgive us. But do not mistake His pardon by thinking that when He forgives us, there is an end of it. Here is a careless weaver at work, throwing the shuttle containing the weft. When she has got half through the warp, she finds she has made an error in the pattern, and when the overlooker unwinds the piece he discovers the flaw running through the whole. Well, what is to be done? She says, "O, do forgive me!" He replies, "Certainly I will; but you know it must be undone." It is weary work undoing a web of long threads; but nobody would buy that piece as it is. So the weaver begins with the last thread and pulls it out from side to side and begins again. Likewise, though the Lord forgives us, we must undo the bad life. As the kindly overlooker stands beside the weaver, saying, Let me help you, so the Lord stands by us to help us to amend the tangled web of our life. While God forgives us and inspires our heart, the rectification of what is wrong must, however, be our own act. We must undo our bad life by beginning afresh.

II. DO NOT BE DECEIVED IN YOUR VIEWS CONCERNING RELIGION. Religion is not a theory; it is the living spirit of usefulness. Religion that does not inspire us to be pure ourselves and useful to others is not the true Christian religion; it is a humbug. Religion will comfort your own heart and make you a blessing wherever you go. While it teaches you to fight against your evil propensities, it trains you to be kind-hearted at home and peaceable-minded abroad. In leading you down the steps of true humility, it exalts you to the noblest manhood; and while constraining you to surrender your will to the Christ-spirit, it gives you the glorious power of God-likeness. A minister was on one occasion preaching on peaceableness, having special reference to Messrs. Pincher and Stiggins, two of his deacons who had long been at daggers' point. Such was his faithful earnestness that the whole congregation was moved, and when the benediction was pronounced, Mr. Pincher went across the chapel to the other, and with tears in his eyes, remarked, "Brother Stiggins, after such a sermon there must be peace between us. Now, I can't give in, so you must!" The other replied, "Well, Brother Pincher, if you won't give in, I'm blessed if I will!" You see, they were religious in theory but not in practical life.

III. WE SHOULD NOT BE DECEIVED IN OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE INVISIBLE WORLD CALLED HEAVEN AND HELL. If you have good things in this world, and do not care for the destitute, you cannot have good things in the other world.

(W. Birch.)

Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.
I. AN EVIL ANTICIPATED. That of having the heart deceived.

1. The scantiness and imperfection of human knowledge.

2. The deceitfulness of the heart.

3. The deceitfulness of sin.

4. The deceitfulness of the world.

5. The deceitfulness of the devil.Such are the reasons we have for believing that our hearts may be deceived. But the text assumes that this deception is an evil pregnant with very pernicious consequences. And this appears from the consideration, that those whose hearts are deceived are involved in a state of the most palpable error. What tradesman would wish to make errors in his accounts? What scholar would not guard against error in his sums? But these errors are trivial, when compared to the grievous error in which those are involved whose hearts are deceived concerning their salvation and their God. Nor is this all; those whose hearts are deceived, are exposed to extreme danger.

II. THE CAUTION URGED AGAINST THIS DECEPTION. "Take heed to yourselves," etc.

1. Be alive to a sense of your extreme danger. Let us consider what we are — how deeply fallen! Let us weigh well our circumstances, dangers, and enemies; this will lay the foundation for caution and circumspection.

2. Seek for the illuminating and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit; O, seek His influence by fervent, importunate prayer. "Take heed to yourselves."

3. By the constant practice of self-examination.

4. By watching over yourselves. "Watch and pray." "Be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." "Watch thou in all things." Watchfulness will lead you to keep a strict guard over your thoughts, words, actions.

(Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)

People
Abiram, Canaanites, Dathan, Eliab, Moses, Pharaoh, Reuben
Places
Arabah, Beth-baal-peor, Egypt, Euphrates River, Gilgal, Jordan River, Lebanon, Moreh, Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim, Red Sea
Topics
Anger, Burn, Burned, Burning, Cut, Fruit, Gives, Giveth, Giving, Ground, Hastily, Heaven, Heavens, Increase, Kindle, Kindled, Lest, Lord's, Perish, Perished, Produce, Quickly, Rain, Restrained, Shut, Sky, Wrath, Yield
Outline
1. Another exhortation to obedience
2. by their own experience of God's great works
8. by promise of God's great blessings
16. and by threatenings
18. A careful study is required in God's words
26. The blessing and curse set before them

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Deuteronomy 11:17

     4816   drought, physical
     4844   rain
     4855   weather, God's judgment
     8845   unfruitfulness

Deuteronomy 11:8-17

     7258   promised land, early history

Deuteronomy 11:13-21

     7410   phylactery

Deuteronomy 11:16-17

     4430   crops

Library
Canaan on Earth
Many of you, my dear hearers, are really come out of Egypt; but you are still wandering about in the wilderness. "We that have believed do enter into rest;" but you, though you have eaten of Jesus, have not so believed on him as to have entered into the Canaan of rest. You are the Lord's people, but you have not come into the Canaan of assured faith, confidence, and hope, where we wrestle no longer with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus--when
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856

The God of the Rain
(Fifth Sunday after Easter.) DEUT. xi. 11, 12. The land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year. I told you, when I spoke of the earthquakes of the Holy Land, that it seems as if God had meant specially to train that strange people the Jews, by putting them into a country where they
Charles Kingsley—The Gospel of the Pentateuch

Gilgal, in Deuteronomy 11:30 what the Place Was.
That which is said by Moses, that "Gerizim and Ebal were over-against Gilgal," Deuteronomy 11:30, is so obscure, that it is rendered into contrary significations by interpreters. Some take it in that sense, as if it were near to Gilgal: some far off from Gilgal: the Targumists read, "before Gilgal": while, as I think, they do not touch the difficulty; which lies not so much in the signification of the word Mul, as in the ambiguity of the word Gilgal. These do all seem to understand that Gilgal which
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant.
"Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before Me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. Behold therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place."--2 Kings
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. )
Ver. 20. "And Noah began and became an husbandman, and planted vineyards."--This does not imply that Noah was the first who began to till the ground, and, more especially, to cultivate the vine; for Cain, too, was a tiller of the ground, Gen. iv. 2. The sense rather is, that Noah, after the flood, again took up this calling. Moreover, the remark has not an independent import; it serves only to prepare the way for the communication of the subsequent account of Noah's drunkenness. By this remark,
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements.
If a faithful picture of society in ancient Greece or Rome were to be presented to view, it is not easy to believe that even they who now most oppose the Bible could wish their aims success. For this, at any rate, may be asserted, without fear of gainsaying, that no other religion than that of the Bible has proved competent to control an advanced, or even an advancing, state of civilisation. Every other bound has been successively passed and submerged by the rising tide; how deep only the student
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

In the Fifteenth Year of Tiberius Cæsar and under the Pontificate of Annas and Caiaphas - a Voice in the Wilderness
THERE is something grand, even awful, in the almost absolute silence which lies upon the thirty years between the Birth and the first Messianic Manifestation of Jesus. In a narrative like that of the Gospels, this must have been designed; and, if so, affords presumptive evidence of the authenticity of what follows, and is intended to teach, that what had preceded concerned only the inner History of Jesus, and the preparation of the Christ. At last that solemn silence was broken by an appearance,
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

The Worship of the Synagogue
One of the most difficult questions in Jewish history is that connected with the existence of a synagogue within the Temple. That such a "synagogue" existed, and that its meeting-place was in "the hall of hewn stones," at the south-eastern angle of the court of the priest, cannot be called in question, in face of the clear testimony of contemporary witnesses. Considering that "the hall of hew stones" was also the meeting-place for the great Sanhedrim, and that not only legal decisions, but lectures
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Among the People, and with the Pharisees
It would have been difficult to proceed far either in Galilee or in Judaea without coming into contact with an altogether peculiar and striking individuality, differing from all around, and which would at once arrest attention. This was the Pharisee. Courted or feared, shunned or flattered, reverently looked up to or laughed at, he was equally a power everywhere, both ecclesiastically and politically, as belonging to the most influential, the most zealous, and the most closely-connected religions
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

Covenanting Confers Obligation.
As it has been shown that all duty, and that alone, ought to be vowed to God in covenant, it is manifest that what is lawfully engaged to in swearing by the name of God is enjoined in the moral law, and, because of the authority of that law, ought to be performed as a duty. But it is now to be proved that what is promised to God by vow or oath, ought to be performed also because of the act of Covenanting. The performance of that exercise is commanded, and the same law which enjoins that the duties
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

The Old Testament Canon from Its Beginning to Its Close.
The first important part of the Old Testament put together as a whole was the Pentateuch, or rather, the five books of Moses and Joshua. This was preceded by smaller documents, which one or more redactors embodied in it. The earliest things committed to writing were probably the ten words proceeding from Moses himself, afterwards enlarged into the ten commandments which exist at present in two recensions (Exod. xx., Deut. v.) It is true that we have the oldest form of the decalogue from the Jehovist
Samuel Davidson—The Canon of the Bible

Deuteronomy
Owing to the comparatively loose nature of the connection between consecutive passages in the legislative section, it is difficult to present an adequate summary of the book of Deuteronomy. In the first section, i.-iv. 40, Moses, after reviewing the recent history of the people, and showing how it reveals Jehovah's love for Israel, earnestly urges upon them the duty of keeping His laws, reminding them of His spirituality and absoluteness. Then follows the appointment, iv. 41-43--here irrelevant (cf.
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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