A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Deuteronomy 11 (Part 2)

Deuteronomy 11:16-32—16 “Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, 17 lest the LORD's anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the LORD is giving you. 18 "Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. 20 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. 22 For if you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do—to love the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, and to hold fast to Him—23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves. 24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the Western Sea, shall be your territory. 25 No man shall be able to stand against you; the LORD your God will put the dread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, just as He has said to you. 26 Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. 29 Now it shall be, when the LORD your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. 30 Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, toward the setting sun, in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the plain opposite Gilgal, beside the terebinth trees of Moreh? 31 For you will cross over the Jordan and go in to possess the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and you will possess it and dwell in it. 32 And you shall be careful to observe all the statutes and judgments which I set before you today.” 24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates, even to the Western Sea, shall be your territory.

What is the chant we here from the Pro-Palestinian crowd today? “From the River to the Sea/Palestine shall be free!” What do they mean by this? That there will be a partition of land for Palestinians separate from the nation of Israel? No. The goal is the elimination of Israel. All this started with the attacks on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists attacked innocent Israelis and killed hundreds and took another >100 hostage. For these attacks, Israel retaliated against Gaza, which is home to the Hamas terrorist organization. Yet the cry of the Hamas sympathizers is against Israel for doing what any nation would do when their people were attacked. (Note to Hamas: if you don’t want to be killed in a war with Israel, don’t start a war with Israel!) So what is the goal of the Hamas sympathizers? A portion of land where they can live side-by-side with Israel? No. “From the River to the Sea/Palestine shall be free!” This is what they mean:

[Hamas] in early 2006 won legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, ending the secular Fatah party’s hold on the Palestinian Authority and challenging Fatah’s leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement. HAMAS continues to refuse to recognize or renounce violent resistance against Israel and in early 2008 conducted a suicide bombing, killing one civilian, as well as numerous rocket and mortar attacks that have injured civilians. The US Government has designated HAMAS a Foreign Terrorist Organization. (https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/hamas.html)

Does this look familiar? It should. This is the nation of Israel, which Hamas has vowed to “push into the sea.” Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution. They don’t want Israel to exist any longer, and will fight until Israel does not exist anymore. “Well, they don’t believe that anymore!” Yes, they do. Look at the picture above, and consider their violent and inhumane attacks on Israeli civilians and one cannot come to any other conclusion but that Hamas wants to end Israel once and for all. We must not let that happen. Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that is keeping the Muslim terrorist organizations in check.

Now, let’s focus on another passage in this section. Deuteronomy 11:26-29—26 “Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known. 29 Now it shall be, when the LORD your God has brought you into the land which you go to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.” We will get to the blessings and curses and the geography of Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal when we get to chapters 27-28. For now, let’s focus on the words spoken here by Moses. It’s real simple: live by the commandments of God, or perish when you turn away from them. FB Meyer wrote, “All along our lives are Ebals and Gerizims, with their ‘Come, ye blessed’ and ‘Depart, ye cursed.’ Always we are arriving at the crossways, on the one of which lies the smile, and on the other the frown, of God. Let us be attracted by the one and dissuaded from the other, till we climb the spiral staircase into the land where there is no cooling love or faltering faith.” We are, in this life, always beset on all sides by blessings and cursings. Helping the poor is a blessing; ignoring the poor is a curse. Fleeing sexual immorality is a blessing, giving in to it is a curse. Loving your neighbor is a blessing; hating your neighbor is a curse. As we walk through life, we will find myriad opportunities to be a blessing and myriad opportunities to be a curse. Thus Jesus said to those who were a blessing by helping the neighbor, “‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (Matthew 25:34) and to those who were a curse by ignoring the plight of their neighbor, “‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:41).

But now here’s a curious thing: today, the Old Testament Law is a curse. It has been done away with in Christ, and now those who seek to keep it are still under the curse—the Law now has no blessing for those who seek to be righteous by keeping it, but are only cursed. Galatians 3:10—For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. Nowhere in the New Testament is anyone who seeks to keep the Law called “blessed”. Why? Because the Law was not meant to make anyone righteous; its only intent was to show how sinful we are and prescribe remedies for when we do sin. Romans 3:20—Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. What did Paul say later in the same epistle? Romans 7:7—I would not have known sin except through the law. Does a child know that if he touches a hot stove he will suffer burns if he has never been told? Probably not. All he knows is that he feels heat from the hot stove. If he gets near it, he may sense heat, but does not think any more about it. So his parents warn him, saying, “Don’t touch this stove when it is hot, or you will get burned.” So what happens in the child’s mind? His curiosity has been aroused, and he now wants to touch the stove. Has his parents’ warnings dissuaded him from touching the stove? No, it has made him now want to touch the stove. So he does, and what happens? His hand is burned, and he feels the pain that has befallen him because of his decision to go against the warnings of his parents and do what they warned him not to do.

This is the Law. God warned us not to partake of certain things because they are sinful and can have negative repercussions. There are certain things that we do not know are sinful, but our Father warns us about them. Does this warning prevent us from doing these things? No, in fact it gives us a curiosity about these things, and our flesh is stimulated to do these things. Romans 7:9—I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. Sin revived. Henry Alford says “sin sprang to life”. That sin that was lurking under the surface came to life when he heard the words “you shall not covet.” Paul may have thought within himself, “What does it mean to covet? Does it mean to want to buy something that is for sale? Or does it mean to harbor a desire for something I should not have?” So he pondered the meaning, and learned that these words meant that he should not desire something that belongs to another and that is not available to him to have. And the desires of his flesh welled up inside of him, and he felt an urge to have those things which he could not have—his neighbor’s wife, his neighbor’s servants or ox or donkey. The desire to have these things became strong within him, and the lusts of his flesh led him to desire these things more and more. But…

Romans 7:10-12—10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.  This is the curse of the Law. Is the Law good? Yes. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. “But the commandment brought sin to life in his flesh.” Yes, it did. But is that the fault of the Law and the commandment? Certainly not! The commandment [against coveting is] holy and just and good. The Law of God is good, but we are not. We are flesh, and our flesh is sinful. Does this negate the righteousness of the Law? If you drive a good nail into a rotting board, and the board fails and falls, is it the fault of the nail? Or the board? The nail was good, and was driven in properly. It was the board that was rotten, and it failed for that reason. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. It is sin in us that kills us, using the Law to do so, being incited by prohibitions and regulations and commandments to do things that are contrary to the Law of God. The sin that dwells within us sees and hears of these things which are sinful and wells up in us, and tells us that we want to do these things. Romans 7:13—Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. Notice Paul says that sin brought forth death by the righteous commandment given by God. The commandment told him to not do a particular thing. His flesh, rebellious like the flesh of all of us, decided it knew better than God, and led him to do that thing. Was it the fault of the Law of God? Or was it the fault of his flesh? Well, was it the fault of the good nail that the rotten board failed, or was it the fault if the rotten board? When God commanded Adam to not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, was it the command that was evil, or was it Adam’s act of eating that fruit that plunged all humanity into sin? That, of course, is a rhetorical question. It is sin—the flesh—that produces death in us by using what is good against us. Was God’s command to Adam good? Yes. “Don’t eat of the tree and you won’t die.” But Adam went against the good command of God—and when you go against good, that is evil and sin. So that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains this part of the verse thus:

Here we meet with a great problem, of course. Why did the holy God allow sin to do this with His Law, which is "holy, and just, and good?" The Apostle's answer is that this was allowed in order that sin might appear sin, which means, that sin might be "shown up for what it really is." The difficulty with sin is to recognize it for what it is. Sin is deceitful, sin is very clever, sin is like a fisherman who hides himself and conceals the bait. Sin has to be shown up in order that it might appear sin, that it might be "shown" to be sin.

“Hath God indeed said?” Yes, He hath said. And what He hath said is good and just and holy. It is sin that makes it appear as though God is keeping the best from us. This is the cry of the atheist, that belief in God is just a tool to keep us stupid people in line. To keep us dependent upon the preacher to tell us what is right and wrong and that truth is up to each individual person, because there is no absolute truth. The atheist author, whether Voltaire or Bertrand Russell or Neitzsche or Christopher Hitchens or Neil deGrasse Tyson, think they have the only truth because they don’t believe in some “Sky Daddy”®. They only believe in science, in things we can touch and see and feel. We can't see God, so He must not exist. “We want something we can know is real and know by the senses! Show me; prove to me your god is real! You can't do it, so I won’t believe he exists! And I hate him!” Psalm 14:1 (Young’s Literal Translation)—A fool hath said in his heart, 'God is not'. The one who does not believe in God is the fool, for he thinks that all creation just appeared and, as the fool Carl Sagan once said, “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” Those, my friend, are the words of a fool.

Who do these people sound like? They sound just like the worshippers of Ba'al and Ashtoreth. They sound like those who carve images of wood and who fashion idols of gold and silver, who form statues of Mary and the saints and bow down to them and do reverence to them as though these icons were real. But we who know the true God know better. We do not worship a god made by human hands. We worship a God who is grander than all of His creation. We worship a God who made all things, both visible and invisible. We know that His commands are good and holy and just, and that in these feeble houses of flesh we will never even begin to live up to the righteousness His Law demands. Romans 8:3—For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin. The Law was weak because our flesh is weak. The Law is a good nail, we are rotting wood. That Law became a curse to us, since none could fulfill it. But hang on, that is not the end of the story. That Law was fulfilled by our great Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who fulfilled every jot and tittle of that Law and became righteousness for us, and by our faith in Him we become the righteousness of God (2nd Corinthians 5:21). And now instead of being a curse, we can now be called “Blessed”. Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in heart, those who are reviled and persecuted, and they who hunger and thirst for righteousness—the righteousness found only in Jesus Christ our Lord!

Jesus, Thou art my Righteousness,/For all my sins were Thine:

Thy death hath bought of God my peace,/Thy life hath made Him mine.

Forever here my rest shall be,/Close to Thy bleeding side;

This all my hope, and all my plea:/For me the Saviour died.

My dying Saviour and my God,/Fountain for guilt and sin.

Sprinkle me ever with Thy Blood,/And cleanse and keep me clean.

Jesus, my Strength, my Life, my Rest,/On Thee will I depend,

Till summoned to the marriage-feast,/Where faith in sight shall end.

(“Jesus, Thou Art My Righteousness” by Charles Wesley)

 

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Deuteronomy 11 (Part 1)

Again, the material contained in Deuteronomy 11:1-7 we have already talked about, so we will move on to verse 8. 

Deuteronomy 11:8-11—8 “Therefore you shall keep every commandment which I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and possess the land which you cross over to possess, 9 and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD swore to give your fathers, to them and their descendants, 'a land flowing with milk and honey.' 10 For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; 11 but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven. 

In Egypt, water was abundant. Every spring the Nile River would overflow its banks, watering the ground surrounding it. The Egyptians built irrigation canals to bring that water further out from the river banks. Thus we see a difference between the people’s time in Egypt and their time in Canaan. Whereas during their time in Egypt they depended upon human labor for their water, now going into the land of Canaan they would be fully dependent on God providing rain to make their crops grow and to water their flocks and herds. We could almost—almost—say this is an allegory for the difference between the two covenants, that in the first they were depending on the works of their hands for their salvation and by the second one was all grace. It would be tempting to say that, but I won’t go that far. Suffice it to say it is an apt picture of the two covenants. 

At any rate, God was leading the people into a land that was unusually arid, with not much rain. So they would have to learn to depend on God to send the rain at its due time in order to water the land and the animals. (We are no different today. We are still dependent on God for our food and water, even though we don’t acknowledge enough our thanks to Him for these things. Does the sun shine, keeping us warm? Let us thank God. Do we have food, even though it may not be a lot and some may have to get it from a local food pantry? Let us thank God. Does the rain fall, watering the vegetable plants that we use for food? Let us thank God. Are we still on this side of the dirt? Let us thank God. In all things, let us thank God. And if we are not thankful enough, let us ask God to grant us the thankfulness to Him that He deserves.) While it did not rain very much in Egypt, they had the water from the Nile River to rely on. In the land of Canaan, it would (and still does) rain about 12-40 inches per year. And in some of the drier areas, the yearly rainfall total was TWO INCHES! So the land would “drink” (verse 11) the rain—as soon as the rain fell on the hot, dry land, it would disappear, soaked in by the thirsty land. Ever spill some water on the sidewalk in the middle of summer? How quickly does it disappear? It’s gone almost instantaneously. The same is true of a desert land. As soon as the rain ends, there is no visible evidence that it ever fell. So the people would have to watch for the rain to come and be ready for when it did come, that they could gather some up to have something for them and for their animals to drink. 

Another option for drinking water was the digging of wells. In the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” we first meet Omar Sharif’s character Sharif Ali bin el Kharish when he kills TE Lawrence’s guide for drinking from Ali’s well without permission or payment. This was not uncommon in desert lands. 

Many quarrels and feuds arose from people of one tribe or nation drinking water from a well of another tribe or nation. In Genesis 26:18-21, Isaac’s servants argued with the herdsmen of Gerar over some wells which Abraham had dug but the Philistines had stopped up. Isaac and his servants did the work of reopening the wells, and the herdsmen of Gerar said, “Hey, wait a minute! Those are OUR wells!” Even though they had left them stopped up, and it was Isaac and his servants who reopened them. Genesis 26:18-21—18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. 19 Also Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there. 20 But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, "The water is ours." So he called the name of the well Esek (עֵשֶׂק [eseq], “contention”), because they quarreled with him. 21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitnah (שִׂטְנָה [sitnah], “strife”). After this quarrel, Isaac took his servants elsewhere, and they dug again another well, in an area over which there was no strife. Genesis 26:22—And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name רְחֹבוֹת (Rehoboth, “wide places or streets”) because he said, "For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." Later in the chapter, Abimelech finds Isaac and makes an oath of truce with him. Isaac’s servants tell him of the well they dug, and Isaac names it שִׁבְעָה (shebah, “an oath”), and names the nearby city  בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע (Beer Sheba, “city of the sevenfold oath”). Genesis 26:32-33—32 It came to pass the same day that Isaac's servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, "We have found water." 33 So he called it Shebah. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day. This would eventually become the southern border of the nation of Israel, and you see many times that the entirety of the whole nation of Israel is described in ten verses as “from Dan to Beersheba”. 

In Genesis 21 we see another instance of such a disagreement. Genesis 21:25—Then Abraham rebuked Abimelech because of a well of water which Abimelech's servants had seized. If you remember when we talked about Numbers 20, when the people of Israel were coming upon the land of Edom, and they sought permission to pass through the land, they promised “We will not pass through fields or vineyards, nor will we drink water from wells” (Numbers 20:17). “So how did people know where to dig a well?” Good question. People would see a place where birds and other animals would congregate, or where trees were growing, go to that spot (for it would usually be a place where there was water which these animals would drink and which would provide water for plants), and start digging until they got deep enough where they would find water. They would then shore up the walls of where they were digging, and build a support for a bucket they would lower into the hole and use to draw out the water. So you see now how precious commodity water was (and still is) in those places. 

Deuteronomy 11:12-15—12 “A land for which the LORD your God cares; the eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year. 13 And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the LORD your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. 15 And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled.'”. Ever hear of someone talking about a desert or a wilderness and call it “God forsaken”? This appellation is far from the truth. God cares about every inch of creation, including the desert and the wilderness. “A land for which the LORD your God cares; the eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year”. Do you see much plant life in the desert? Not really, But you will occasionally see a tree growing up out of the rock. “How does it grow through the rock?” God gives it the strength to do so. Jonah 4:5-6—5 So Jonah went out of the city and sat on the east side of the city. There he made himself a shelter and sat under it in the shade, till he might see what would become of the city. 6 And the LORD God prepared a plant and made it come up over Jonah.

“Well, how does it grow with so little rain?” God has made it to require only as much water as He causes to fall from the sky. Matthew 6:28-30—28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Worried about everyday life? Don’t be. God makes all the flowers and trees and bushes and vines to grow by His perfect care. Will He not much more take care of you? Matthew 5:44-45—44 “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” God takes care of all life. He causes good things to happen to bad people, and He causes bad things to happen to less-bad people (yeah, there are no “good” people. There is none good but God, see Matthew 19:17; Mark 10:18; Luke 18:9). He also causes bad things to happen to bad people and good things to happen to less-bad people. God is the Cause and Creator of everything, visible and invisible, living and non-living.

Even the rain. The rain that falls from the sky is at the beck and call of our Omnipotent Creator. He can shut off the water works if He decides to (Leviticus 26:19; 1st Kings 8:35; 2nd Chronicles 6:26). And Moses reminds the people of this in Deuteronomy 11:16-17—16        Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, 17 lest the LORD's anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the LORD is giving you. Drought in the land was considered a curse from God (much like barrenness in women), and was usually preceded by widespread sin among the people. “But there wasn’t drought in the land of the Assyrians or the Hittites. And they were sinful nations.” But they were not God’s chosen people. This is an example of the rain falling on the unjust—to show them that He is God and is the Source of every blessing. If God caused it to rain on them—well. He would give them temporal blessings, but in the end they would be counted as unrighteous. And they would suffer eternal punishment for their sins. But if the people that God chose out of all the people—the people upon whom God would place His name—if they sinned a grievous sin against Him (in this case, the sin of idolatry), He would withhold the rain, and the drought in their land would certainly be a curse from God.

“And you perish quickly from the good land which the LORD is giving you.” Death comes quickly in the desert when there is no water. On average, a human being can survive up to 7 days without drinking water. This is owing to the fact that our bodies are 70% water, and if needed can wring out whatever water it needs to at any time. In the elderly this decreases to 3-5 days. In the desert, with no water to drink, the time it takes for even a healthy person to die without adequate hydration is about 1-2 days. What happens when someone dies of dehydration? Well, first the cells in the body will start to shrivel (usually in the limbs, since they are expendable. Skin will also shrivel). Water will be taken out of the blood to keep the organs functioning, which will make it harder for the heart to push the blood through the vessels. Because of the depleted volume of blood, the blood pressure will drop and cause the heart rate to increase to get the blood through the body. The kidneys will also be adversely affected, since the body will shunt most water away from them so as not to waste it, and the kidneys will begin to fail and will eventually shut down. The desert heat, coupled with the decreased blood volume, will make it difficult to breathe. The eyes will also experience a loss of fluids (since you don’t need your eyes to live), and will shrivel up. As blood is shunted to the brain and the core of the body (the heart and the lungs), the hands and feet will feel colder. Eventually the decreased fluid level in the body will cause brain cells to shrivel up and die, causing delirium. All these organ failures reach critical levels, which are incompatible with human life, bringing about death. In a day or two. Or as it says, “And you perish quickly.”  (see https://www.popsci.com/dehydration-death-thirst-water/) This will not be the case in Hell. For the one who does not know Christ, their spirit will be surrounded by eternal flames, will not shrivel up and die, but will be in conscious torment for all eternity, with no hope of relief. What would take 1-2 days to accomplish in the body will last forever in Hell.

If the drought came because of the nation’s sin, there was a remedy—the manifold mercy of God. He is a merciful God, pardoning sins for no other reason than the sinner asking for forgiveness. Many times we read in the book of Judges how the nation would sin a grievous sin, God would allow them to be defeated by an evil nation, the people would cry out to God, and He would deliver them. God told Solomon the very same thing in 2nd Chronicles 7:13-14—13 “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, 14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” What did the people have to do? Did they have to go into years of self-flagellation and darkness? Did they have to kill and burn thousands of bulls and goats? No. All they had to do was “Humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways”. This was the encouragement the prophet Joel gave the people in Joel 2:23—Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God; for He has given you the former rain faithfully, and He will cause the rain to come down for you—the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. And why would He do so? Because after He sent the judgment of the locusts upon the people and their crops, they would call upon Him because they would see their sin and repent of it. Joel 2:13—So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.

Good is the heavenly King,/Who makes the earth his care,

Visits the pastures every spring,/And bids the grass appear.

Like rivers raised on high,/The clouds, at thy command,

Pour out their blessings from the sky,/To cheer the thirsty land.

The hills, on every side,/Rejoice at falling showers;

The meadows, dressed in all their pride,/Perfume the air with flowers.

The ridges drink their fill,/And ranks of corn appear;

Thy ways abound with blessings still,/Thy goodness crowns the year.

(“The Blessings of Spring” by Isaac Watts)

 

Part 2 next week 

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen. 

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Deuteronomy 10

We have discussed everything contained in Deuteronomy 8:1 through Deuteronomy 10:13 at various times, so we will not tread that ground again, but will pick up Moses’ narrative at Deuteronomy 10:14.

Deuteronomy 10:14-22—14 “Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the LORD your God, also the earth with all that is in it. 15 The LORD delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. 16 Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. 17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. 18 He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. 19 Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 20 You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name. 21 He is your praise, and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen. 22 Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as the stars of heaven in multitude.” 

Let’s start with verse 14 because it is absolutely mind blowing! “Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the LORD your God, also the earth with all that is in it.” Everything, everywhere, in all of creation belongs to God. Our sun has a mass 330,000 times that of Earth and its diameter is 109 times that of Earth’s. The star PZ Cassiopeiae has a radius 1200 times that of our sun. In fact, there are believed to be about 200 trillion billion stars in the known universe. That is the number 200 with TWENTY ONE ZEROES after it! Or 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. And guess who owns them all? God. There are other objects in space—asteroids, comets, meteors, and these are innumerable—and guess who owns each and every single one of them? God. And how big is the universe? It is 93 billion light years in EACH DIRECTION from one end to the other (if there is an end to it). And how many miles is that? 546,700 with EIGHTEEN ZEROES behind it. That is 546,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 . And God owns every single square inch of it! And as big and as huge and as vast as all that is, what does Solomon say about it? 1st Kings 8:27—“Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You.” 546 sextillion by 546 sextillion by 546 sextillion miles—1.63398183X10^71 cubic miles—cannot contain God. And it all belongs to Him! (And I won't even begin on how He owns time!) Even those things we cannot see belong to God. Laws and principles of math, logic, physics, chemistry, gravity. Thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires. Kingdoms, lordships, powers. All these things belong to God. Because they were created by God. Colossians 1:16—For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. Who is “Him”? That would be Christ Jesus. John 1:4—All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. That includes you. 

And what is the best response we can come up with? “Wow!” And I don’t say this to belittle God, but to praise Him. Because that is the best we can do, when our feeble little minds try to grasp even a whisper of the greatness of God. The greatest and grandest words we can use to extol the hugeness and awesomeness and majesty of God don’t even come close. And guess what? He chose the nation of Israel to be His. He chose to place His name in Jerusalem. He chose to dwell in the temple there. Before the temple, he dwelt in the Tabernacle between the cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant in a part of that Tabernacle measuring 30’ X 30’. “Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You.” 1.63398183X10^71 cubic miles of space cannot contain Him, yet He chose to dwell within a 30’ X 30’ room! And you know what? If you have faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior, He will take up residence within you! Romans 8:9-10—But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 1^st Corinthians 6:19—Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 2nd Timothy 1:14—That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Colossians 1:27—To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. God, who is bigger than all the 1.63398183X10^71 cubic miles of space in the universe chooses to dwell within those who have faith in Christ! And guess what? He owns you, too! You have been bought with a price (1st Corinthians 7:23), and He doesn’t issue refunds! 

15 “The LORD delighted only in your fathers, to love them; and He chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day. 16 Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.” God had given to Abraham the sign of circumcision of the foreskin (Genesis 17:10-11). But Moses was telling the people here that it was not only their foreskin that needed to be removed, but the fleshly covering of their hearts—their wants and desires that were against the holiness of God. Because God had chosen them (and not because they had chosen God), Moses commands them to put off the desires of their hearts and to bow their hearts to God. You see, one could have their foreskin circumcised, and that was good, it was the sign that the person was of the people that God chose. But what good would that circumcision be if the person walked in the ways of the pagans and worshipped their idols? If that person committed murder or adultery? That person would be as one who was not circumcised, and he would suffer whatever penalty God’s Law determined. Jeremiah repeats this warning in the word he received from God in Jeremiah 4:4—“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your hearts, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest My fury come forth like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.” They had circumcised their foreskins but their hearts were still made of stone. They were stiff-necked and refused to bow under the hand of God. It wasn’t only the circumcision of Abraham God wanted to see, it was the taking away of their fleshly desires, the wantonness of their hearts, the desires of their flesh He wanted them to cut away. But because they wouldn’t do that He told them, through Jeremiah’s contemporary Ezekiel that He would make a new covenant with them, in which He would do it, and give them a new heart that was tender toward Him. He would bring them back from their exile, He would do a work in them that He had never done before, and He Himself would give them a new heart. 

Ezekiel 36:19-27—19 So I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed throughout the countries; I judged them according to their ways and their deeds. 20 When they came to the nations, wherever they went, they profaned My holy name—when they said of them, 'These are the people of the LORD, and yet they have gone out of His land.' 21 But I had concern for My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever they went. 22 Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord GOD: "I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. 23 And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD," says the Lord GOD, “when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. 24 For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. 25 Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” He had caused them to go into exile because they had not circumcised their hearts, but now He was saying He would give them a new heart, one that He Himself would circumcise, and that they would walk according to His ways and be stiff-necked no longer. This is why Paul tells us in Romans 2:25—For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Paul wrote Romans to both Jews and Gentiles in Rome. So the Jews would have known exactly what Paul was saying, and the Gentile believers could have learned about circumcision from their Jewish brethren. And they could show their Gentile brothers and sisters that even though they had been born with a heart that wanted to go its own way, that God would give them a heart that would gravitate toward Him. 

17 “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. 18 He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. 19 Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” God does not take a bribe because there is nothing we could bribe Him with, since He owns every single thing in the universe He created. He looks with pity upon those who can do nothing for themselves, and sets His eyes against those who would do them harm. This is the attitude we are to have as well—to help those who cannot help themselves. You’ve heard the old saying “God helps those who help themselves.” Now, forget that saying because it is not true. What is true is saying that “God helps those who cannot help themselves.” If one can help themselves, they will start to believe that they do not need God, and live their lives as though He does not exist at worst, or at best that they can live their lives without Him. Neither way is any way to live. This is the definition James gives of true religion. James 1:27—Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. The word translated “religion” here is the Greek θρησκεία (threskeia, “ceremonial observance—religion, worshipping”). In other words, if one is to say they are truly worshipping God and doing those things He commands, they must help the widows and orphans—those who can do nothing for themselves. This was one of the things the people of Israel got hung up on before their exile—the rich would become richer at the expense of the poor, they would take advantage of those who could least afford it, and they would eat while the poor went hungry. 

This was the sin of the rich man in Luke 16:15, 19-21—15 And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God…19 There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.” (This was a different Lazarus than the brother of Mary and Martha, whom He raised from the dead in John 11.) This rich man had all he would ever need (and maybe more), yet Lazarus only wanted some scraps of food the rich man did not eat. But the rich man said “Eh, go, be warmed, be filled” (see James 2:16). Or as we would say today, “I’ll pray for ya.” And even though this rich man could have brought him out a plate of food, he simply sent him the gristle and waste from what he ate. Even the dogs had more pity on this poor man, because they licked the sores that covered his body! Jesus had some harsh words for men like this in Matthew 25:41-46. And He certified the words He said there, by telling the people of the eternal fate of this rich man, Luke 16:22-23—22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. “Was the fact that Lazarus was a beggar the reason he went to Abraham’s bosom?” No, it was because he depended on God to provide even the leftover scraps of the rich man’s meals, indicating that he relied on God for his very existence. “Was the rich man’s wealth the cause of him going into Hades?” Yes, because he relied on his wealth to sustain him, and did not share it with those who needed it. 

A Worldling, wretched, vile and base,/Not subject to restraining grace;

But yielded to his lusts and pride,/And set all fear of God aside.

Though he had riches laid in store,/Yet no compassion on the poor!

A beggar in a helpless state,/Found no assistance at his gate.

The worldling spent his precious days,/In Luxuries, in sports and plays—

While the poor beggar lay distress'd,/With poverty and sores oppress'd.

But to them both it proved strange,/To meet with such a sudden change;

The worldling sent to endless pain,/The beggar plac'd with Christ to reign.

(“A Worldling, Wretched, Vile and Based” by Paul Henkel) 

The poorest 5% of Americans have higher incomes than about 95% of all people who have ever lived. May we always seek to use what we have been given by God to help those less fortunate than us, remembering that we are less fortunate than others. I remember hearing Paul Harvey relate a story about how when he was a kid, his church raised funds to help a family that was having financial troubles. So his family went out and raised money for them; week after week they would collect cans and return them for the deposit, they would go door-to-door to collect money for them, and when the end of the fund raising campaign came, they took all they collected to the church for the family. A few days later his family got a knock at the door. It was the church pastor. And he said to the father that the church was raising money for a family in need. It was his family they were raising money for. His family realized that even with as little as they had, they were still blessed by God. If I can find the story I will post it here. 

20 “You shall fear the LORD your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in His name.” Fearing God is the first thing we must do if we are to think ourselves wise. Solomon tells us this in Proverbs 1:7, 9:10. That the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. How can a man think himself wise if he does not even understand—first that God exists—and that He is the Almighty Ruler, King, Lord, Sovereign Potentate, and that He is above all and holds the entire creation in His hands? He spoke and all was created. He probably used more words than He needed to. And if He wanted to, He could end it all with a snap of His fingers. He is bound by nothing but His own holiness. He never fails, He never sleeps, anything and everything He wants to come to pass will come to pass. Those who scoff at the idea of the Virgin birth of Christ do not realize what an easy thing it was for God to do so. And by minimizing the Almighty power of God, they elevate man to a state he does not deserve. Was Man the crown of all of God’s creation? Yes. But he is still a part of creation, we are not God no matter what Steven Furtick or Creflo Dollar say.

First, Steven Furtick:               

  

It’s always been in you. There’s nobody who can leave my life who can keep God from keeping his covenant with me. I’m not in covenant with a person. I’m not in covenant with a political party.  I’m in covenant with God Almighty! I am God Almighty! 

Creflo Dollar:

 

When the devil shows up in the wilderness experience of your life, then you’ll act just like Jesus. You’ll say, “Get thee behind me, Satan, because I am the Lord Your God!” Hallelujah! “I have authority over you…” It’s time for us to go and dominate this world! It’s time for the body of Christ to start gathering up what belongs to us! 

We laugh at these men (and others like them) when they say such heretical things, but it is sad. Because they are influential to a great many people—people who refer to themselves as Christians (whether they are or not, God knows). And these men are leading these poor people away from the true God and into the worship of themselves by teaching these things. Bottom line—we are not God! We can never be God. We occupy an infinitesimal piece of a little planet in the 1.63398183X10^71 cubic miles of all creation, and to think that we could rule over this creation is ludicrous! I won’t even get started on the many blasphemous ideas about who God is because, quite frankly, even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. So let us remember this one thing—YHVH is God. He alone is God, and there is no other. There can be no other. Because even the 1.63398183X10^71 cubic miles of all creation cannot contain Him, and to think that we could ever have any power to rival His in truly insane. We should fear Him, serve Him, and hold fast to Him. He is our anchor, He is the one who supplies our needs, He is the One who fights for us, He is the one who raises up kings and brings them down. He turns their hearts in whichever direction He decides. 

21 “He is your praise, and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen. 22 Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as the stars of heaven in multitude.” Think about the whole of Christian history. All of human history is Christian history because all of creation belongs to Christ. For Christ—according to the flesh—is descended from our first father Adam. From Adam came a long list of descendants including Noah, his son Shem, then Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Judah, then Obed, Jesse, David, Solomon, etc., until that night when Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. All of human history belongs to Christ. He created it, He sustains it, and one day He will return and lay final claim to it. He is our praise. He is our God. The Early Church Father Melito of Sardis said as much in 180AD:

 

He that hung up the earth in space was Himself hanged up; He that fixed the heavens was fixed with nails; He that bore up the earth was born up on a tree; the Lord of all was subjected to ignominy in a naked body—God put to death! ... [I]n order that He might not be seen, the luminaries turned away, and the day became darkened—because they slew God, who hung naked on the tree.... This is He who made the heaven and the earth, and in the beginning, together with the Father, fashioned man; who was announced by means of the law and the prophets; who put on a bodily form in the Virgin; who was hanged upon the tree; who was buried in the earth; who rose from the place of the dead, and ascended to the height of heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. 

Who else but God could live a sinless life on this planet? Who else but God could refuse to repay those who did evil to Him? Who else but God could endure all that Christ endured on the earth, then set His face like flint to go to the cross and die an ignominious death for all the world to see? When you read the passages about how the soldiers mocked Him, how the Jews rejected Him, how Herod wanted to see Him perform some parlor trick for his amusement, how those who saw Him on the cross shook their heads and wagged their tongues at Him and ridiculed Him, remember one very important thing—they were doing these things to God! Let me share a few verses from Scripture, edited to show the truth about these things. Matthew 27:29-30—When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on God’s head, and a reed in God’s right hand. And they bowed the knee before God and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they spat on God, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. Mark 15:24—And when they crucified God, they divided His garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take. Matthew 27:39—And those who passed by blasphemed God, wagging their heads. You see now how much more grave their blasphemies and insults were! The God of all creation and of all history, and these people rejected, mocked, and blasphemed Him to His face! 

This is the God of all. This was the God who called Abraham out of a city in the Chaldees, showed him the land his descendants (who were still several generations away) would dwell in, caused Joseph to be sold into Egypt, brought about a famine that drove his father and 11 brothers to Egypt, kept them there for 430 years, led them out of their slavery with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and would eventually conquer the people dwelling in the Land of Promise by the power of God. Seventy people went down to Egypt, and when they came out 430 years later, they were a nation—a relatively small nation, but a nation nonetheless. By the time they conquered Canaan they had grown in number. Were there 200 trillion billion of them? Of course not. But they had grown to a number previously unimaginable. And it all started with 70 people who went to Egypt. More precisely, it started with one man who came out of Ur of the Chaldees! 

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Deuteronomy 7 (Part 2)

Deuteronomy 7:7-26—7 “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them. 12 Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers. 13 And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you. 16 Also you shall destroy all the peoples whom the LORD your God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. 17 If you should say in your heart, 'These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?'—18 you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So shall the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 Moreover the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed. 21 You shall not be terrified of them; for the LORD your God, the great and awesome God, is among you. 22 And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. 23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. 24 And He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven; no one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25 You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. 26 Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.” 

This is a long passage, but it is actually pretty simple to pull apart. First we see that God did not choose these people because they were the biggest and greatest nation, but because they were actually the least (Verses 7-8). Then we see the faithfulness and the severity of God (Verses 9-10). Then Moses tells the people that it is for this reason if they are mindful to obey God and keep the statutes He is giving them, He will cause them to prosper (Verses 11-15) and drive out their enemies from before them (Verses 16-26) 

7 “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” God had sworn an oath to Abram that his descendants would one day be a nation, although Abram was just one man and did not have any sons at the time (Genesis 15:1-5). He led Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, a region in what is now known as Mesopotamia (Acts 7:2)—he was one man living in a sinful nation, but God would raise up of this one man a people who would become a mighty nation before Him. The nations around him were already established, but Israel had not yet arisen. Eventually, Abraham would father Isaac, after that Isaac would father Jacob, and after that Jacob would have 12 sons who would go down to Egypt and would have sons who would become numerous. So numerous, in fact, that a Pharaoh who came generations after them would fear their numbers and put them under bondage to him. This people would cry to God, who would hear their pleas and bring them out of Egypt into a land they did not know. But even then they would not be established as a nation; this would not happen until they conquered Canaan under the leadership of Joshua and divided the land among their 12 tribes. God could have used any nation that was already established, but how would that prove to the people of the world that He was a mighty God? How would that nation learn to depend on God for their very being? He did not choose another nation because these nations already had idols they worshipped, and He wanted to establish a nation that worshipped Him and Him alone. “But could He not have simply changed the hearts of the people of another nation?” Yes, He could have done so. But that was not what He wanted to do. He wanted to make for Himself a nation full of those who knew Him and Him alone as God. 

9 “Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face.” God will repay those who hate Him directly. “But what of those today who hate and despise Him? They do not die instantly?” This is true. Or is it? Did Adam die the moment he ate of the forbidden fruit? No, but he began the process of dying. The literal reading of the last part of Genesis 2:17 is “dying, thou dost die” (see Young’s Literal Translation).  The cells in his body, which before his sin would not see decay, began the process of death, and needed to be replaced. Even though he lived for 930 years, he still died (Genesis 5:5). He repaid Adam for his sin beginning that very day. In Genesis 20, when Abimelech takes Sarah to be a wife (after Abraham told him she was his sister, which wasn’t a lie but wasn’t the whole truth), God tells him in Genesis 20:3—“Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man's wife.” He had already stricken Abimelech with some sort of terminal disease, even though he took Sarah in innocence, not knowing Sarah was Abraham’s wife. But even though this offence was committed in ignorance, still aroused the anger of God, and He punished Abimelech with some sickness, for it says in Genesis 20:17—So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech. God had repaid Abimelech to his face for his sin. 

The same is true for those who hate God today. Romans 1:21—Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. This describes people who know, somewhere inside them, that God is real, but they don’t want to admit it. So they deny Him, and squash the light of God, and devise their own ideas about God, or that there is no God. And if they persist in their efforts, what does God do? Just as He hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:13, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 11:10, 14:8), so will He harden the hearts of those who deny Him. Romans 1:24, 26, 28—24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness …26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions…28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. He is thus repaying to these who deny Him to their face for their hatred of Him. John Calvin:

 

What He says, however, as to taking vengeance without delay, does not seem to accord with other passages of Scripture, in which He declares Himself to be slow to anger, kind, and long-suffering. Besides, it seems also to be contradicted by experience, since He does not immediately hasten to inflict punishment, but proceeds slowly, so as to compensate by His severity for the slowness with which He acts. But we must remember what He says in Psalm 90:4, that a thousand years in His sight are but as a single day; and consequently, when we think that He delays, He is, in His infinite wisdom, hastening as much as is necessary. He seems, indeed, to take no notice for a time, that He may thus invite men to repent; but still He declares that He will not delay, but that He will come suddenly, like a whirlwind, to hasten His judgments, lest the ungodly should grow drowsy from their security. Let us, therefore, learn quietly and patiently to wait for the fit season of His vengeance.

God’s vengeance may seem slow to us, but it is immediate to Him, and He will repay those who despise Him. 

11 “Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them. 12 Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers. 13 And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. 14 You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15 And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you.” God is faithful (1st Corinthians 1:9; 2nd Corinthians 1:18). If He makes a covenant, He will keep it. In fact, if He says anything you can believe it is true. But there came a time when God told the people that their sins and their idolatry had gone on for too long, and that they had broken the covenant beyond repair. Hosea 1:8-9—8 Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. 9 Then God said: “Call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not My people, and I will not be your God.” But these people were the people that God set aside for Himself, and were a holy nation to Him. He had sworn that they would be His people forever. And in the next verses in Hosea, he says just that. Hosea 1:10-11—10 “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' there it shall be said to them, 'You are sons of the living God.' 11 Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and appoint for themselves one head; and they shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel!” This last part of verse 11 speaks of the time when God will sow the seeds of the faithful (“Jezreel” is Hebrews for “God will sow”). God sows seed where He will (Matthew 13:3; Mark 4:3; Luke 8:5). This is how He keeps the covenant with Israel—the new and everlasting covenant, the one which the people of God will not break, for we shall always be His people. “And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' there it shall be said to them, 'You are sons of the living God.'” We are both, Jew and Gentile, of one olive tree, grafted together by Christ (Romans 11:15-36). “But all the people of Israel won’t be saved, because many reject Jesus as Messiah!” But read what John the Baptist tells them in Matthew 3:9-10 (repeated in Luke 3:8)—9 “Do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. 10 And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” What are the trees he is talking about? He is talking about the natural olive tree Paul speaks of in Romans 11:24. 

Even though the people of Israel grumbled against God and did not show gratitude for His manifold mercies, but were a stiff-necked people and many times bucked against His authority, He did not forget the covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Nehemiah 9:28-33—28 “But after they had rest, they again did evil before You. Therefore You left them in the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them; yet when they returned and cried out to You, You heard from heaven; and many times You delivered them according to Your mercies, 29 and testified against them, that You might bring them back to Your law. Yet they acted proudly, and did not heed Your commandments, but sinned against Your judgments, 'Which if a man does, he shall live by them.' And they shrugged their shoulders, stiffened their necks, and would not hear. 30 Yet for many years You had patience with them, and testified against them by Your Spirit in Your prophets. Yet they would not listen; therefore You gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. 31 Nevertheless in Your great mercy You did not utterly consume them nor forsake them; for You are God, gracious and merciful. 32 Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy: do not let all the trouble seem small before You that has come upon us, our kings and our princes, our priests and our prophets, our fathers and on all Your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day. 33 However You are just in all that has befallen us; for You have dealt faithfully, but we have done wickedly.” Nehemiah was speaking to the people after they had returned from their exile in Babylon. Why did they go into exile? To punish them for constantly breaking the covenant God made with them. Their kings had fallen down before idols; the rich were oppressing the poor; men were going into their neighbors’ wives. They had to be cleansed. Even more than during the forty years when they wandered in the wilderness, this was not only a cleansing for the people, it was a Sabbath for the land (2nd Chronicles 36:21). The grumbling in the wilderness happened because the people had to understand that God is God and provides for His people. When they were taken as captives, they had already known this truth for centuries and decided to turn a blind eye. Even still, God did not forget that He had promised that the seed of Abraham would be as the sand of the sea (Genesis 22:17, 32:12). Thus, when the 70 years of their captivity was finished, He brought them back and made them, once again, a great nation. 

16 “Also you shall destroy all the peoples whom the LORD your God delivers over to you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. 17 If you should say in your heart, 'These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?'—18 you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: 19 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So shall the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20 Moreover the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed. 21 You shall not be terrified of them; for the LORD your God, the great and awesome God, is among you. 22 And the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little; you will be unable to destroy them at once, lest the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. 23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, and will inflict defeat upon them until they are destroyed. 24 And He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you will destroy their name from under heaven; no one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25 You shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. 26 Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.” 

It was not up to the people to defeat their enemies—their job was simply to fight them, God would give them victory as He did against the Amalekites (Exodus 17:10-16) and against Sihon the king of the Amorites (Numbers 21:24-25) and Og of Bashan (Numbers 21:33-35). And it was certainly not the strength of the people of Israel that brought them out of Egypt, but the mighty hand of God who smote Pharaoh and all of Egypt with plagues which the sorcerers of Egypt could not overcome, each one worse than the one previous. When Hezekiah was king, was it the strength of the people that slew 185,000 Assyrians, or was it the hand of God? (2nd Kings 19:35; Isaiah 37:36) Likewise, is it up to us to defeat sin in our lives, or is it by the power of God and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ? We cannot defeat Satan in our own strength—we must seek help from God. For it is Christ who gives us victory over Satan and sin (Romans 8:37; 1st Corinthians 15:57). 

O victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever!

He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood;

He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him.

He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood

(“Victory in Jesus” by EM Bartlett) 

And because God has given us victory over Satan, we should cleanse ourselves from everything that opposes God, get rid of the idols in our lives and seek to live for Him. For everything that is under the power of Satan will seek to drag us away from God and into service to Satan. Even as Achan, who kept for himself accursed things from Jericho which the people were commanded to place under the חֵרֶם (cherem, “ban”) (Joshua 7:1). But his eyes let him be carried away by how pretty the things were, and the lust of his eyes caught him in a snare and he took from the battle the accursed things. Joshua 7:1—But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son of Carmi…took of the accursed things; so the anger of the LORD burned against the children of Israel. Notice the sin was Achan’s, but God was angry with all Israel. One man sinned, but the whole body suffered. Why? Because they were all accounted as one, and as such were all accountable to one another in the things of God.  From The Biblical Illustrator:

 

This is here attributed to the whole people, which was really the act of but one man or one family. This is not because of any guilty participation in this trespass by others; there is no intimation that any others of the people were involved in a like crime. Nor is there any implication that others were privy to the crime of Achan, and by concealment of the fact became its abettors and sharers in its guilt. In all probability his act was not known or suspected beyond the limits of his own family. Nevertheless, Israel was one people, and it is here dealt with as one corporate body. There was criminality in the midst of them. And it was necessary that it should be disavowed and punished, in order that the people might be freed from all complicity and connection with it.

(From the sermon “Corporate Responsibility” by W. H. Green, D. D. Cited in The Biblical Illustrator) 

If one person bowed down to an idol, or held an accursed thing, the penalty for that person’s sin was visited upon the entire camp. How many times do we read about the sins of Jeroboam, which he had sinned and by which he had made Israel sin? It was Jeroboam who sinned, but his sin affected the entire nation. Did all of Judah sin and rebel against God and against King Nebuchadnezzar? Or was it King Zedekiah? Yet the entire nation was taken into exile. One man’s sin doomed the entire nation to captivity in Babylon. (The Northern Kingdom of Israel—yes, the entire nation was corrupt because of the sin of Jeroboam and was taken to Assyria first.) Did we sin against God by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? No. But that sin is on us because of Adam. Likewise today, when one Christian sins, it is a mark against the entire body of Christ, and we are all members of each other (Romans 12:5; Ephesians 4:25). Let us put away all things which God considers to be sin—lying, anger, murder, wrath, adultery and the like. May we not bring shame to the body of Christ, knowing that we are knit together with Him (Ephesians 4:16) and we are one with Him. 

 

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.