Cursed on the Tree

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 58, Cursed on the Tree.

"His body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance." Deuteronomy 21:23.

At first glance, this looks like a mere legal detail. A practical instruction about burial, about not leaving a body exposed overnight, about keeping the land pure. The kind of thing that feels like ancient code, far removed from our lives. But hidden right in the middle of this verse is one of the most important sentences in all of Scripture: "a hanged man is cursed by God."

Hold on to that phrase. Because it comes back.

Centuries later, the apostle Paul is writing to the Galatians, trying to explain what happened at the cross — why Jesus died in that specific way, hung on a tree, between two thieves, outside the city walls. And Paul doesn't invent a new explanation. He goes straight to Deuteronomy 21:23 and quotes this exact phrase: "cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." And then he says the most astonishing thing: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

Stop on that for a moment. The law Moses gave wasn't about Jesus directly — it was about any body hung publicly as a sign of divine judgment. But God, in his sovereignty, was writing a pattern centuries earlier that would only find its full meaning when the Son Himself was hung on that tree in our place. This wasn't coincidence. It was prophecy disguised as civil law.

And here is the heart of it all: the curse the law describes — the curse that should have fallen on whoever broke God's covenant, on whoever sinned, on you and on me — that curse was carried by Christ. He didn't just die physically. He took on Himself the exact category the law described: cursed. So that the blessing promised to Abraham, the blessing of life, of grace, of adoption as children of God, could reach us.

Notice also the last line of the verse: "you shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance." The law guarded Israel's physical inheritance from defilement. And at the cross, in a far deeper way, God was guarding His people's eternal inheritance — through that same language of curse and tree. What looked like defilement became purification. What looked like defeat became history's greatest victory.

So today, when you look at the cross, don't see only suffering. See an exchange. See the curse that was yours being carried by Him, and the blessing that was His being given to you.

So here is the call for today: before breakfast, stop and give thanks out loud. Tell Jesus, in your own words: "Thank You for carrying my curse on the tree, so that I could receive Your blessing." Don't keep it only in your thoughts. Say it out loud.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.