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. 

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Deuteronomy 7 (Part 1)

Deuteronomy 7:1-6—1 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. 6 For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.” 

The people of Israel were to be separate and unique from the tribes and nations around them. The Israelites were not to marry into their families, they were not to adopt their customs. Why? Because if they did, the pagans would lead them into worshipping their gods, and this was the worst thing they could do. Which is why Paul said in 1^st Corinthians 15:33 (ESV)—Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits." It is easier for a moral and upright person to be influenced and led away by the immoral than for the immoral to be swayed by good habits. If you’ve read your Bible, which do you see happen more often? Do the Canaanites gravitate toward worshipping YHVH? Or do the Israelites begin to worship Ba'al? We human beings are a curious lot—we would rather chase after some fleeting pleasure that is no lasting good, than to wait upon something that will benefit us more in our later lives but will bring no immediate pleasure. Such was the mind of the Israelites (we see this in Numbers 25). 

2 “When the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.” It was not by their might or their power that they would conquer the tribes of the Promised Land—it was God who would deliver them. And when He would conquer these tribes, they were not to forget the fiery hot indignation which God had toward them. They were not to simply subdue their armies, but they were to completely and utterly (and literally) wipe them off the face of the Earth. They were not to leave one single vestige of these armies alive, but were to slay every man of these armies. They were not to enter league with them, they were not to do business with them, they were not to show any mercy toward them, for these were peoples who worshipped idols made with hands, who practiced all kinds of wickedness in their religious rituals, and who did all kinds of things contrary to the righteous requirements of God. So Moses instructs them to wipe out every member of these armies and to not leave a one of them breathing. 

3 “Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.” Moses commanded the Israelites to not allow their children to marry any of the sons or daughters of the people who lived in the land they were to possess. Why? “For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods.” He knew that any intermarriage with these peoples would cause the Israelites to stumble into worshipping the idols these peoples worshipped and by doing so would lead them away from giving God the glory and honor due His name. And He would not tolerate that, for these people were a nation holy and set apart to God by God (see Exodus 19:6). If they mingled with these peoples, and worshipped the idols they worshipped, they would not be unique as a people, and would not be seen as any different from them. And that was not what God commanded—He commanded that they be different from the peoples around them. 

See, marriage is not something to be entered into lightly. When you marry someone, you are taking all that person is and joining it to everything you are. Genesis 2:24—Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. When you get married, you and your spouse become one flesh. You are joined to her and she is joined to you. And when you take your vows you are saying that you accept everything that person is. Including their belief (or unbelief) in God. If you are in Christ, do you want to become one with a person who does not believe in God? Are you willing to say that you love this person—who denies the reality of God—that you can simply overlook their unbelief with a wink and a nod, and that this is attractive to you? 2^nd Corinthians 6:14-18—14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." 17 Therefore " ‘Come out from among them and be separate’, says the Lord. ‘Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.’" 18 "I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty." 

Those who are in Christ have the Holy Spirit—that is, God Himself—dwelling within them. Will that person join themselves to one who hates God? Will they become one with a person who worships a god of human invention? And if so, why? Sometimes believers think “Oh, if I love them enough, and I show how genuine my faith is, then eventually they will believe as well!” This is called “conjugal evangelism”, and is a popular notion that the unbelieving will grow towards God when in truth, it leads the follower of Christ further away from God. In an interview about his book “Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch”, Lee Strobel said:

 

Conjugal evangelism is trying to convert someone through marriage. It’s knowingly dating a non-Christian; the hope and belief that you will influence that person to become a Christian. Through interviewing lots of people for this book, we’ve found it’s more likely the woman is the Christian in these situations. She is more likely to lose her faith than the man is likely to gain faith. Often you have a reverse evangelism taking place. That’s a dangerous position. A Christian shouldn’t want to put themselves in to. We think conjugal evangelism is very dangerous. You deceive yourself into thinking the other person might be more spiritually receptive than they might be because your judgment might be clouded by romantic feelings or chemistry with the other person. Our counsel is that Christians should not even consider that. I’ve found even after we speak on this topic and we talk about all the turmoil, pain and conflict Leslie and I had when I was an atheist and she was a Christian, people will still come up afterwards and say, “I understand that. That’s really important, but I’m dating this guy and we’ll be married soon and he’s really close to becoming a Christian and I think if we just get married I’ll be able to influence him.” I want to shake them and say, “Read my lips: Do not become unequally yoked with a non-believer!” The bible says it for a reason; to protect us from the kind of pain and heartache Leslie and I endured for two years of our marriage.

(https://www.marriagetrac.com/lee-strobel-interview-2/) 

It is a dangerous thing for the Christian to even date someone who is not a Christian. You are becoming intimate with one who has no interest in God, and will (more than likely) drag you away from Christ, rather than you bringing the unbeliever closer to Christ “But isn’t that kind of thinking showing a lack of faith in God? Who’s to say the unbeliever won’t be converted?” My friend, I did not write the words of 2^nd Corinthians 6:14-18, the apostle Paul did. And he got those words from none other than the Holy Spirit himself. He said again, in another place, 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For "the two," He says, "shall become one flesh" (1^st Corinthians 6:15-16). If you are in Christ, every single part of you belongs to God. Shall you then become one flesh with a harlot, one who does not believe in God but rather openly mocks God? Is that the message you want to be showing the world? Would it not rather be more beneficial—for you and for the body of Christ—to become one with a person who knows God and loves Christ? To take as your own flesh and blood one who knows what it is like to walk the paths of righteousness with God as their guide? If you take one who does not know God, and something happens and you need godly guidance, will the unbeliever be able to help? Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? (Amos 3:3). But the one who knows God can help you up, bring you close to God when you need Him, and help you limp along until you are back on the path and standing strong again. You are one flesh with your spouse, and if you are walking with God, and your spouse is walking with God, then you and your spouse—being one flesh—and God, could rightly be called the two spoken of here in Amos. 

5 “But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. 6 For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.” How many times did some of the kings of Israel and Judah depart from worshipping God and turn to worshipping idols? Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Joram, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Shallum, Menachem, Pekiah, Pekah, and Hoshea in the northern kingdom of Israel; Rehoboam, Abijam, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah, Ahaz, Amon, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah in Judah. All these did wickedly before the LORD, and built altars and high places and images to Ba'al and Ashtoreth. (Even some of the “good” kings weren’t always good. Nevertheless, God did not wipe out the people for the sake of His servant David (see 2^nd Kings 8:19).) 

But this was not what God commanded, and certainly not what He wanted. “You shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.” Just as they were to obliterate the armies of the peoples they were to encounter, so they were to obliterate the idols these peoples worshipped. God will not tolerate the worship of false gods (Exodus 23:13, 34:14; Jeremiah 44:5). And either in this life, or in eternity, God will punish those who do so. Because there is but one God over all creation, and He will not acknowledge the existence of other gods. This was the first command in the Decalogue, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3). He and He alone is God (Psalm 86:10), and should be worshipped as such. When we dabble into looking at other gods and being fascinated by them, we are on a road that can lead to our destruction. The same thing happened to the people of Israel. Moses, in Deuteronomy 32:15-17, would call to their minds the time when they provoked God by worshipping other gods. And why did they do that? Because they had grown as a nation, they thought that it was because of they themselves that they had thus grown. They forgot that it was God who made them grow bigger—that it was God who had supplied their needs, and that they had done nothing of themselves to make themselves more than they were. Deuteronomy 32:15-17—15 “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick, you are obese! Then he forsook God who made him, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation. 16  They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. 17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear.” (Note: “Jeshurun” is a poetical name for Israel, and is rendered ἠγαπημένος [egapemenos, “the beloved one”] in the Septuagint. It carries the same sort of connotation as Αββα [Abba, “Dad”] in the New Testament). Notice in Verse 17 he calls them “demons”. The Psalmist uses the same language in Psalm 106:37—They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. All who believe in and love God should also consider anything that exalts itself as God, but is not God, to be nothing more than a fabrication of Satan, and a demon. For who is the liar, and father of it (John 8:44)? Who told the first lie in Genesis 3:1? Who is it that wants to destroy everything about God, to lead His children away from the truth, and to keep them in chains forever? It is this same Satan. 

Today, however, we have a new demon to beware of. It is not Ba'al or Ashtoreth, which are no more. It is not Dagon, who is nothing more than a whisper of a thought today. And yes, we do have the false gods like Allah or the “God” of Mormonism. But this god is more crafty than these, for it is one we use every day, and need to use every day. That god is money, more specifically the love of it. Now, money may not seem to be a god or something people worship, but it can be. If one stores up for themselves more money than a thousand people can spend in a lifetime, for no other reason than to say they have it, that is when it becomes an idol. 1^st Timothy 6:9-10—9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Can a person have a billion dollars when not originally intending to do so? Well, yes. I don’t think Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg thought their businesses would become as lucrative as they have become. But when one sets out to have a billion dollars and that is their main goal in life, it distracts them from the one thing that is more important than anything else—God, and the worship of Him. “So I’d like to have a billion dollars, what’s the harm?” Ah, but how would you go about getting that billion dollars? And would that pursuit of that billion dollars take your mind away from God, and cause you to want to defraud your neighbor? That, my friend is covetousness, which is idolatry (Colossians 3:5). Jesus even warns us about coveting wealth, first in Matthew 6:19,21—19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal…21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” A few verses later He tells us in Matthew 6:24 (repeated in Luke 16:13)—“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” In other words, is your heart with stuff and things and money, or is it with God? Will you serve God or wealth? 

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast/save in the death of Christ, my God!

All the vain things that charm me most,/I sacrifice them through his blood.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,/that were a present far too small.

Love so amazing, so divine,/demands my soul, my life, my all.

(Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”) 

Let not your heart be set on this worlds or the things of it. Think of Christian in John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, how he set down his burden when he came to the cross:

 

He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and little below in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back; and began to tumble, and so continued to do so until it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. 

1^st Timothy 6:8—And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. Philippians 4:11-12—11 Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: 12 I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Friend, if God has given you the things you need, do not go chasing after the world or the things the world says you need. For we need nothing other than Christ. He is the only thing we truly need. Let our prayer rather be like the words of Proverbs 30:7-9—7 Two things I request of You (Deprive me not before I die): 8 Remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches—feed me with the food allotted to me; 9 lest I be full and deny You, and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God. (You probably won’t hear Kenneth Copeland or Paula White preach that passage!)

 Part 2 next week

 

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen. 

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Deuteronomy 6 (Part 3)

Deuteronomy 6:13-19—“13 You shall fear the LORD your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you 15 (for the LORD your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the LORD your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. 16 You shall not tempt the LORD your God as you tempted Him in Massah. 17 You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, His testimonies, and His statutes which He has commanded you. 18 And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may be well with you, and that you may go in and possess the good land of which the LORD swore to your fathers, 19 to cast out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has spoken.” As we saw in Numbers 30, the taking of an oath in the name of YHVH was a serious thing. And we talked at length about that there. We have also seen many times the trouble the people found themselves in when they went after other gods. We will instead look at verse 16. “You shall not tempt the LORD your God” (“You shall not put the LORD your God to the test” [ESV, NASB]. I like these renderings a bit better). Now, you may recognize this verse from when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:7; Luke 4:12). Satan was also trying God’s patience, by challenging Jesus to throw Himself off the top of the Temple. Matthew 4:5-6—5 Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you,' and, 'In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.'" He wasn’t showing Jesus that God would protect His Anointed, but rather he wanted to push God’s buttons and make Him do his (Satan’s) will. (It also shows us that Satan, too, knows Scripture) And Jesus saw through his act, and quoted Scripture back at him. Matthew 4:7—Jesus said to him, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"

Moses says this to the people so they do not go chasing after other gods and risk incurring His wrath. We test things to see how far we can go with them before they will break. But it is not something we want to do with God, because even though His patience is infinite, there does come a time when He says “ENOUGH!” (See Numbers 14:22). And Moses was warning the people that they did not want to see how far they could push God until He had enough. And we do not want to do that, either. But many do. They get as close as they can to the line they should not cross, they push God’s patience and they find out, the hard way, that He will only allow them to go so far. John Wesley wrote: “Sinners, especially presumptuous sinners, are said to tempt God, that is, to make a trial of God, whether he be, so wise as to see their sins, so just and true and powerful as to take vengeance on them, concerning which they are very apt to doubt because of the present impunity and prosperity of many such persons.” They will push God to the very limit, and will receive the recompense for their actions.

Deuteronomy 6:20-25—20 “When your son asks you in time to come, saying, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments which the LORD our God has commanded you?' 21 then you shall say to your son: 'We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand; 22 and the LORD showed signs and wonders before our eyes, great and severe, against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household. 23 Then He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in, to give us the land of which He swore to our fathers. 24 And the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day. 25 Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the LORD our God, as He has commanded us.'” This passage is recited by Jews every year during Passover. And they do not change the “we” and “us” to “they”. These are kept intact the way they were written by Moses. For the Jew today is descended from the Jew then. Their history is history, and the Exodus is still just as vivid in the memory of a Jew today as it was so many centuries ago. And it is broken up so that the children ask the questions and the adults answer. And it plays upon the natural curiosity of a child, who will constantly ask “why?” The question Moses tells the people that the children will ask is “why?” “Why all the commandments?” “Why all the statutes and judgments?” “And why do you follow them and keep them?” The answer is simple. “Because God looked favorably upon us when we were slaves in Egypt, and He brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And because of His love for us, we reciprocate that love by listening to and obeying all that He has asked of us.”

?מה נשתנה הלילה הזה

Ma nishtana halaila hazeh?

Why is this night unlike all others?

 

.שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין חמץ ומצה

הלילה הזה כולו מצה

Shebechol haleilot, anu ochlin chametz umatzah.

Halaila hazeh, kulo matzah.

On all other nights we eat either leavened or unleavened bread.

On this night, why do we eat only unleavened matzah?

Answer: To remind us of the haste with which our ancestors left Egypt.

 

.שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין שאר ירקות

הלילה הזה מרור

Shebechol haleilot, anu ochlin she’ar yerakot.

Halaila hazeh, maror.

On all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs. On this night, why only bitter herbs?

Answer: To remind us of the bitterness of slavery.

 

.שבכל הלילות אין אנו מטבילין אפילו פעם אחת

הלילה הזה שתי פעמים

Shebechol haleilot, ein anu matbilin afilu pa’am echat.

Halaila hazeh, shtei fe’amim.

On all other nights we do not dip our herbs even once. On this night, why do we dip them twice?

Answer: Some say to remind us of our coming and going from Egypt.

 

.שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין בין יושבין ובין מסובין

הלילה הזה כולנו מסובין

Shebechol haleilot, anu ochlin bein yoshvin uvein mesubin.

Halaila hazeh, kulanu mesubin.

On all other nights we eat sometimes sitting and sometimes reclining. On this night, why do we all recline?

Answer: To remind us of how free people relax.

(https://pjlibrary.org/beyond-books/holidays-for-kids/passover-hub/articles/teaching-kids-to-say-the-four-questions)

And this should be remembered by even us Christians. We were in bondage to Satan and sin. We were his slaves, and did his bidding. But God sent His Messiah, His Anointed One, as He promised, to deliver us from the chains of sin and that He might usher us into His glorious kingdom. We are saved, not by obeying rules and commandments. But we obey the rules and commandments because we love the LORD our God, and want to please Him and do right by Him. John 14:21—“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.” 1st John 5:2-3—2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. It should be our delight to keep the commandments of God, as He gave us His Son so that we might be reconciled to Him. He watched His Son as He had spikes driven through His wrists and His ankles; He watched as the crowds reviled Him and spit on Him and mocked Him; He laid all the sins of the elect on His Son, as He had to do for those sins to be forgiven; He watched as all this transpired and His Son, with whom He had spent eternity with and loved above all else, was made sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2nd Corinthians 5:21). This is why we keep His commandments—not because we loved Him first, but because He first loved us. And His Son loved us enough to endure all these things that we might be with Him in eternity! I’ll end with the words of Robert Hawker—

What a most delightful subject seems to be opened to us in these verses. The Jewish children are naturally supposed to enquire into the peculiarities of their fathers’ faith. And the fathers are supposed as naturally to be earnest in gratifying their infant minds in the information of the truth. Oh! That all Christian parents, and masters of families, were but alive to this most interesting business! Reader! Do turn to the gospel, and take a view of the children in the temple, when, under the divine teaching of the HOLY GHOST, they were saluting the blessed Redeemer with Hosannas. This will afford somewhat of an idea of the loveliness of early piety. (See Matthew 21:9; Matthew 21:16; Psalm 8:2). I only detain the Reader, just to observe, what Moses saith of the conduct of Israel, that it shall be their righteousness, (an imputed righteousness implied,) meaning, no doubt, that all their acceptance would be in GOD their Savior, and in his complete righteousness; for the apostle tells us, that CHRIST is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Reader! Do not fail to consult the apostle upon this important subject.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.