This sermon was first preached at CHBC 19th August 2007
The audio is available here
In His latest book, “The God Delusion” Richard Dawkins the Oxford Professor, Richard Dawkins describes his reaction to passages of the bible such as we are going to look at this morning.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
It is chapters of the bible like the one we are going to study together this morning that have provoked such a strong reaction in Dawkins.
We rightly see acts of genocide as some of the most heinous of all evils.
And that is why we find it so hard to read chapters of the bible like the one we are going to look at today.
Turn with me to Deuteronomy 7
Main Hall
West Hall
1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles [b] and burn their idols in the fire.
About 3500 years ago God commanded his people to show no mercy to men, women and children from seven nations that dwelt in the land. Seven nations.
This is genocide on a massive scale: millions of men women and children were to be put to the sword at the LORD’s own command.
Let’s be honest: this is one of the hardest truths in God’s word for any of us: Christian or Non-Christian, if there is no sense in which you are horrified by this chapter, then I assume you haven’t thought about it much.
We are supposed to be horrified by the holy war that God wages on his enemies.
Perhaps you haven’t stared this truth in the face as you ought to. Perhaps you, Like Dawkins, find the picture of God in this chapter unpalatable but you just think:
“Well, this is a long time ago: God doesn’t act like this any more. He is different now that Jesus has come.”
My friend, God has not changed. Human nature hasn’t changed. God has recorded this event in history, not just in this chapter, but also in the whole book of Joshua, so that we might learn difficult truths about God and about ourselves.
Don’t read about God’s great judgments in the past and imagine that God will never act like that again. He will. Every action of judgment, whether it be the conquest of Canaan, the flood of the whole world, or the destruction by fire of Sodom and Gomorrah. These are God’s wrath diluted, scaled down, to point to the undiluted wrath of God that is yet to come.
When we meet God one day it will be this God we meet. The God who commanded this. And if we are his enemies at the time, we will face a worse fate than those seven nations.
So, if we are not going to deny that this is God, why is even what he commands here, though horrific, why is it good and right?
Turn over to Chapter 9: 4-5
4 After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, "The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness." No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you.
And they were indeed wicked nations:
The two sins that are most frequently talked about as the reason for God’s great anger on the nations were sexual deviancy and infanticide.
So central to the way of life were these practices that they were central religious practices: The Asherah Poles were the local of informal cultic prostitution; on their altars not only would animals be sacrificed, but people would sacrifice their own children.
God’s patience had run out with nations that had taken two of his greatest gifs to all peoples: sex within marriage, and the gift of children, and torn apart those blessings.
We rightly abhor genocide. We should hate it when we hear of genocide that has happened or is happening around the world.
We should hate genocide because nobody has the right to say that this nation or that nation of people is so beyond the pale that we will see to it that they are no more.
But does God? Does God have the right to say, “that is enough!” That whole society is rotten to the core and may not continue.
Yes, he does. God has the right to say, “this society is so steeped in evil that I will make an end of it.”
So, any other genocide than this one is wrong because only God has the right to command such a thing. Only God. Anyone else who advocates any genocide than this unique display of God’s holiness is guilty of unforgivable arrogance, putting themselves up as God. Adolf Hilter, Poll Pott, Joseph Stalin, Slobodan Milosevic, Mehmed Talaat and countless others through history.
With the Canaanites God had been extremely patient: Way back when he had promised the land to Abraham more than four hundred years earlier in Genesis 15.
"Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. … 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."
When will it be time for God to say “enough” to this whole world that where we enjoy following idols who demand such evil worship?
Times when Christians have taken the conquest of Canaan as justification for taking up the sword themselves have taken the same arrogant stance. The Crusades were a terrible misunderstanding of what it means to belong to the Lord.
No, this is a unique occasion. Not unique that God pours out his judgment. But unique that he does so by commanding his people to be the instruments of judgment.
No, the New Testament church is not to take up arms as a church. Nations may fight just wars, but the church’s battle is to be spiritual, not physical.
Paul writes in Ephesians
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
We are called to a battle that is to be just as fierce as the conquest of Canaan. But our enemies are not the nations in the land: the enemies are spiritual. The devil and his minions who wage war against our souls.
And in this battle we are to be as single-minded as the Israelites were. We are to put to death any vestige of the idolatry that was once in our heart before the Lord Jesus came and liberated us. We are to show it no mercy. We are to hate it with extreme prejudice.
God’s people are to have a single-minded devotion to the Lord in the battle against sin.
This battle is real. There is a real enemy
Yet we are called to single-minded devotion, trusting Christ for the victory.
We are going to see 3 aspects to this single-minded devotion.
1) The Call (1-5)
2) The motivation (6-15)
3) The barriers (16-25)
1) The Call (1-5)
Have a look down again at verse 1 to see the singlemindedness to which we are called.
1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- 2 and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.
I wonder what are the treaties that you are tempted to make with sin in your life?
Don’t hold back from the fight. You must destroy them totally.
Are there areas of your life that you just want to leave with nobody knowing about. Why?
My brothers and sisters, this is why you have been put in a church: to hold hand with others who know you life, and encourage you to keep on repenting and believing. If you cannot think of at least two other people who really know the whole story of your struggles, then pray that the Lord would show you the danger of secret sin.
Secret sins are not just sins that we are embarrassed about, they are sins that we do not want to kill. Imagine that you discover that you have a problem with cockroaches in your house. Would you just try to hide them? No! If you hide them, they will multiply. Expose them – it may be ugly, but only when they are exposed can they be seen clearly for what they are, and exterminated.
How much sin should we be comfortable with in our lives? Not even a hint.
John Owen in his excellent book “the mortification of sin” writes,
“do you mortify sin; do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you”
Don’t hold back from the fight
Don’t fraternize with the enemy
3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
Perhaps it was thought that the one way to save these people from the Lord’s wrath was to marry them. Then they would be one of you right? Changed allegiance.
No! Says the Lord; do not marry them. Perhaps there was a particularly strong warrior, or a particularly beautiful woman: perhaps they would be better to befriend than to destroy.
NO! Do not fraternize with the enemy, said the Lord.
Do you think that there are relatively unimportant sins that you can commit, but they are worth it for the greater good?
Perhaps that romantic relationship with the Non-Christian that seems so harmless – and after all, we all know stories of how the Lord has used such relationships to bring that Non-Christian to faith.
The Lord can do what he wants, and is remarkably gracious; but do not think that you can tame sin. To deliberately choose to sin may be a path from which you will not return.
Perhaps we think that joining in with the coarse joking, or the spiteful mocking, or the jovial grumbling will so endear us to our colleagues that it might even give us a chance to share the gospel.
My brothers and sisters, we cannot tame sin, so let us not become comfortable with it.
Perhaps you think that all out war against sin in our lives is too radical a thing. If you think that, you don’t understand what sin is. Like the Ring in Tolkein’s epic, it has only one master. We cannot wield it.
Do you think that you can keep sin under control in your life? Sin is never under control. It is either being put to death, or it is gaining control.
Remember Jesus’ response when he was told that he could have every kingdom on the whole earth – if he just committed one single sin!
Think of it: what would you do to see the whole world willingly bow to Jesus’ authority.
You may not sin a single time even if you thought it a means to see a billion converts.
The devil is quite happy to hold out what looks like godly ends as a motivation for sin.
John Piper writes,
“The two great enemies of our soul are sin and Satan. And sin is the worst enemy, because the only way that Satan can destroy is by getting us to sin.”
We are not to be surprised by sin, but we cannot fraternize with it.
So, look at your life: what are the idols you are most prone to?
Idols are rationalizations of sin. An idol is something that says, “It is worth obeying me rather than the Lord because I will bless you.”
What are the ways in which you rationalize sin? Next time you, or an honest friend notices you sin, don’t just say “Yes, I’m sorry!” ask yourself, “Why did I do that?” “What idol was promising me what blessing if I do that?”
Don’t leave idols intact
(5) This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles [b] and burn their idols in the fire.
Pick up a copy of David Powlinson’s “Seeing with New eyes” and turn to chapter 7: read through diagnostic questions that reveal your idols to you. Here’s some of them…
“What are your goals and expectations?” your ultimate goal is either the glory of the true and living God, or it is an idol.
“What do you tend worry about?” We tend to worry about those things that will damage our idols.
“Where do you find your garden of delight?”
“Whom must you please?”
“What would make you feel secure?”
“what do you pray for?”
“How do you spend your spare time?”
Get to know your hearts, that you might discover the strongholds that the devil has in your life, and then spend your life battling against them.
We should also recognize the need to be particularly distanced and horrified by the sins that the culture sees as so normal.
We, in today’s world, need to learn this lesson. The same two beautiful gifts that God has given are under constant attack in our western cultures.
Sex has become a casual recreation rather than the physical expression of the marriage relationship it was designed to be.
From the human trafficking of people forced into prostitution to the explosion of internet pornography, to the very way that sex is used to sell just about everything, we live in a society world-wide that laughs at God’s design for sex only within marriage.
Al Mohler writes, Rather than directed toward fidelity, covenantal commitment, procreation, and the wonder of a one-flesh relationship, the sex drive has been degraded into a passion that robs God of His glory, celebrating the sensual at the expense of the spiritual, and setting what God had intended for good on a path that leads to destruction in the name of personal fulfillment.
And what about our attitude to the sacrifice of children: 6m Jews were killed in WW, the 7m Ukranians starved to death by Stalin in 1932, the 1.5 million Armenians killed in turkey during ww1, the 2 million killed by Pol Pott in Cambodia.
But if you add all those together you have reached the number of unborn children murdered worldwide in just over 4 months.
On what altars had these children been sacrificed? What are the hideous idols of the 21st Century that would demand such horrendous sacrifice?
The Lord is calling us to single-minded devotion to him – which means a single-minded war against the devil’s reign in our lives.
Why?
Why should we take such a radical stance?
If you are not a Christian here, let me say that you are very welcome. Perhaps you are wondering what on earth you have walked into. Perhaps you are sitting there thinking, “Wow, these Christians are really as repressed as I thought… why don’t they just lighten up and do what they want.” Why does there need to be a battle at all?
Well, it might seem strange to you, but Christians actually want to be involved in the battle, because we have realized that many of our desires are in fact evil.
Let me explain: our lives are not intended to be an aimless following of our appetites for pleasure. We have been created for a particular kind of beautiful pleasure. Pleasure with no guilt, with no regrets, with no hangovers. Pleasure that isn’t at anyone else’s expense: The pleasure of loving and honouring the God who made us.
That is the pleasure we were designed for. Yet we all foolishly and rebelliously imagine that we can find more pleasure in the things that God made than in God himself. We do this because we have a self-destructive desire to be God – to be our own greatest source of pleasure. We want to see ourselves made much of rather than God. We are happy to have our pleasure at the expense of god rather than in praise of him. And he is furious.
Yet he also continues to love us. And in his amazing love for self-centered fools like us, he sent his son, Jesus Christ to live as a man a life of joyful service of his Father, and yet died the death of a sinner;
Why? So that when anyone turns from their self-centered world, to Jesus, God’s righteous anger has already been poured out on Jesus, so that we can begin to enjoy the life that we were designed for; a life enjoying the Lord. A life that says that we can lose anything and everything, for we belong to him, and he is all in all.
Jesus calls you today to such a life. Give up your idols that cannot bless you, and will drag you down to destruction. Give them up for the Saviour who will bless you eternally if only you will turn to him as the source of all true joy.
Respond to the Lord jesus’ call to join the battle for single-minded devotion.
What is to be our ultimate motivation.
Well, if idols are what is to be destroyed, the motivation for single-mindedness is to be the opportunity to display the character of the true and living God.
2. motivation for single-minded devotion: Displaying who we belong to.
6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
7 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. 10 But
those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction;
he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.
11 Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.
12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. 15 The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.
God’s command ought to be enough of a motivation for us. But actually the command in and of itself cannot equip us to keep the command.
The ultimate motivation for obedience is not the law, it is the gospel!
As John Bunyan put it
Run, John, run, the law commands
But gives us neither feet nor hands,
Far better news the gospel brings:
It bids us fly and gives us wings.
The gospel holds out to us the life that we have in fellowship with God as the motivation for singleminded devotion to him. He is worth being devoted to! And in being devoted to him, we have the extraordinary privilege of showing him off to the world.
The one who found the pearl of Great Price: do you think he gained the pearl in order to lock it up in its safe! No he would display it to the world and let everyone know “it is mine! This pearl is mine!”
And in the gospel we have the extraordinary privilege of being a display of God’s Character to the world: did you see that.
Have a look at verse 6:
For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
Because we are the treasured possession of the holy Lord we have the privilege of trying to display his holiness.
(6-15) Display God’s holiness
When you read a passage like Deuteronomy 7, it is easy to see that God’s holiness is merely a terrible thing – for this chapter reveals the hatred that a holy God has for evil - even the evil that is in us. But do you see that his holiness is beautiful. He is so beautiful that he rightly hates all that is morally ugly. He would not be so beautiful if he loved moral filfth.
Yet we know that that is who we are. When we see God’s holiness we have our own moral filth revealed to us. If there are areas of our lives we want to hide from others, what about the pure gaze of the perfect God who sees all. We cannot hide from him. We deserve to be treated by him far worse than the seven nations we have been reading about.
Yet this holy God has made a way for us not to cower before him and hide from him, but to approach him bodly, having had our guilt washed away by the blood of Jesus.
And then he calls us to live out a life with his mark of ownership upon us loving the things he loves. Hating the things he hates.
If you are considering what it would mean for you to trust in Jesus, don’t think only about what you would be saved from: hell.
Why would you find hell a terrible place? Because you would suffer physically? Or because you would never know what it is like to enjoy the being for whom you were designed. You would know for certain he was there, but you would always hate him even though he is the most beautiful and lovable being alive.
When you reflect upon the reality that God will indeed judge the world, and send people to hell, do you, Like Richard Dawkins, see this as an ugly thing: or are you able to gaze at God’s awesome holiness that hates all that is evil with a passion and see beauty. A god Dawkins would find more palatable who will judge no evil and hold nobody accountable is not a beautiful god, but a compromised god.
We have been created to reflect his glorious holiness.
It is not enough to say, “yes, isn’t my sin ugly.” If we hate it like God hates it, we will want it dead. We will act as judge jury and executioner of the sin in our own lives.
We are to be an active, living display of God’s holiness by our opposition to sin.
But his people are also a display of his might.
Display God’s might
7 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
(7-8)
I wonder what you think about the idea that God chooses some people and not others. Do you think that it would make those who are chosen proud of himself? Not when you realize that he doesn’t choose the most impressive, but the least impressive.
He is like a chef going early to the vegetable market to handpick exactly the produce he wants. But he chooses all the squashed tomatoes and the maggot infested zucchini and the rotten eggplants to make his ratatouille. He does it to display his might.
Election is the most humbling of doctrines: if you think that the difference between the Christian and the Non-Christian is our choice first, and God’s second, then those who believe in Jesus are somehow more virtuous, or impressive in their abilities to recognize the Messiah.
The elect are not the elite, but the unlikely.
We often sing, “How deep the father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only son to make a wretch his treasure.”
But as well as great love, the gospel is a display of great power. What power there is in the gospel that he might make wretches like us his treasured possession!
What motivation that is to fight hard in the battle against sin. As we fight in all his strength we have the joy of people seeing us change and us being able to say to them “you know I couldn’t have changed in this way. You know that this is a display of God’s mighty hand.”
Whatsmore we can display God’s deity.
Display God’s deity
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. 10 But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.
There are only two sides in the spiritual battle that is raging all around us. The Lord’s side, and the devils.
By single-minded devotion to the Lord we can display to the world that the Lord is God, and he will not be mocked.
When we share the gospel with our friends and colleagues and neighbours and family members, how will they believe that there is a hell that they are walking towards: how will they believe it if they see our lives and don’t see that even those of us who bear his name seem to know that the Lord is God.
How will they believe that there is a hell at all if even those who have been chosen by him play with sin as if it were a trifle that will do nobody any real harm?
Non Christian. Why would people take such joy in laying aside worldly pleasures if they had not come to know the God who gives a better joy? Do you see in the Christians you know a joy that you can’t explain… my friend, that joy can only be found in knowing that the Lord is God. Reach out for that joy in Christ today.
Display God’s faithfulness
(11-15)
11 Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.
12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the LORD your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your forefathers. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. 15 The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you.
Just as the Christian is called to a spiritual war where Israel was called to a physical war, so the blessings we are promised are spiritual blessings.
The place of rest and joy that Israel was promised if they obey they did not receive. Only a faithful Israel would receive the blessings promised.
Galatians makes it clear that the faithful Israel is one man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The blessings of the land were promised to Abraham and his seed: paul writes in Galatians, “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed,"[g] meaning one person, who is Christ.”
Christ is the faithful Israel who receives an inheritance from his father, and then distributes an eternal inheritance to all who have faith in him.
Is your life a display of the faithfulness of God? If you have trusted in Jesus, it already is – god has been faithful to his Son in increasing the number of those belonging to Jesus.
He will remain faithful by not allowing the devil to prevail in his war for your soul.
But the way that he will keep you from falling to the devil’s wiles is by keeping you in the fight.
He will motivate you by holding out himself. He will remind you that he is indeed worth living for; that his character is worth enjoying and dispaying.
That is the motivation for your devotion.
But there are also barriers.
The fight is long and hard.
There are times at which the fight will appear foolish and unnecessary to our sinful eyes.
3. Barriers to single-minded devotion:
16 You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.
17 You may say to yourselves, "These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?" 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear. 20 Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. 21 Do not be terrified by them, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. 22 The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. 23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. 25 The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet the silver and gold on them, and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the LORD your God. 26 Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction. Utterly abhor and detest it, for it is set apart for destruction.
We are to fight all the barriers to single minded devotion with faith…
We are to reflect on the truths of God’s word that hold out sufficient answers to all the questions we have as to whether it is worth continuing the fight.
Have you thought about how so much of the armour of God is about having faith in the truths of God’s word:
Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Because it is God’s truth that combats the devils lies, Those who are particularly called to teach God’s word will often be the particular focus of direct spiritual attack.
I’m so grateful to those of you who have prayed for me as I have preached this sermon: I had a real sense that the enemy did not want a sermon to be preached that is going to exhort us to spiritual battle.
The same enemy doesn’t seem to want Deepak to begin his ministry of speaking God’s word into our lives. Pray for Deepak and for all your elders for there is one who would do all he can to silence the teachers of God’s word.
The first barrier we see is pity.
Pity
(16-26) Fight false pity by trusting God’s warnings
(16) 16 You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.
For those Israelites who really knew the Lord, I assume this would have been perhaps the hardest thing to ask. For after all the Lord himself is a God of mercy. We’ve just seen that: only a merciful god would choose sinners to be his treasured possession.
Yet we need to know that God’s patient mercy does eventually run out. If you are wondering why God has not stopped all the evil in the world already, it is because of his patient mercy. He holds out mercy in Christ to avoid the coming judgment. But that judgment will come one day.
There will be no unforgiven sinners who will enter heaven.
The unforgiven sinner will cry out for pity on that last day, but it will be too late.
And so, the conquest was to be one where there was to be no pity shown – not even to a child.
Why? Because the Lord knew what would happen. He knew that those nations must be fully destroyed, or Israel would end up just like them, facing God’s judgement. Tragically that is what happened. Within a few decades the time of the judges began, and Israel was worse than the nations that they had failed to wipe out.
When you think that something is only a small sin, and can easily be left alone without causing much harm, listen to God’s warnings. Sin, when it is full-grown leads to death.
John Owen exhorts us to see 4 dangers in even the smallest sin:
1. the danger of our heart being hardened
2. the danger of the Lord’s discipline
3. the danger of losing the peace and joy that the gospel has brought us
4. the danger of eternal destruction.
Why is it so dangerous? Because it is so evil:
It grieves the spirit of God.
It wounds Christ
My brothers and sisters – do not let the devil get a foothold.
Another barrier is FEAR
17 You may say to yourselves, "These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?" 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear. 20 Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. 21 Do not be terrified by them, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God.
Fight fear by trusting God’s Power
It has been a heavy topic. I don’t think we can speak about Deuteronomy 7 lightly. But I hope that has not left you feeling weighed down.
Perhaps you are saying to me, :But Mike, you don’t know my life… you don’t know how sinful my heart is.
No, but I know mine.
And I know the power of the Lord.
When you read through Exodus, it seems to us crazy that the Israelites would doubt that God could bring them into the land. He had taken them out of Egypt, the world’s greatest superpower of the day unarmed carrying off all the Egyptians gold. He wouldn’t have much problem bringing them into the land.
Yet they doubted because there were some very tall people in Canaan.
Does it seem strange: not when I know my heart.
My brothers and sisters do you realize the extraordinary miracle that the Lord has done in saving you? There was nothing in you that had any power or any resolve to break with your slavery to idols. Yet God broke it and granted you a love for Christ.
Why would you think that he doesn’t have the power to break some besetting sin.
“But Mike” you say “I haven’t the strength to fight”
You rightly realize that you don’t have the power. Stop depending upon yourself.
Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
We do fall again and again, not because the Lord’s strength is insufficient, but because we insufficiently depend upon his strength. We do not put on the full Armour of God. And then we do not stand. We should be unsurprised and humbled when we go into the battle unarmed and come out wounded.
William Gurnall Writes
“Faith gives the soul a view of the great God. It teacheth the soul to set his almightiness against sins magnitude, and his infinitude against sins multitude; and so quencheth the temptation. The reason why the presumptuous sinner fears so little, and the despairing soul so much, is for want of knowing God as great. Therefore, to cure them both, the serious consideration of God under this notion is propounded.”
The enemy is no doubt formidable. That is God’s design. When God calls us to single-minded devotion he doesn’t call us to something that we can do by ourselves. He calls us to something that is deliberately designed to us to be impossibly difficult. We are to come to an end of ourselves.
If you are not a Christian, whether you follow another religion or none, don’t try to wage war on your sin. You need to belong to Christ first, or all you will be doing is replacing the idol of self-indulgence with the idol of self-sufficiency. Your are made to love and depend upon Jesus.
Another barrier is weariness (22-24)
22 The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. 23 But the LORD your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them.
Fight weariness by trusting God’s steadfast help
There are some temptations that come from having fought the battle for a long time. Perhaps your aspirations as a young Christian haven’t come to fruition – you haven’t had the impact upon the church and the world that you would have hoped to have had.
To be honest, you are weary by the slow progress that you seem to have made in godliness over the years.
Well, let that cause you to long for heaven. The Lord is still committed to the fight. He has brought you this far. Allow your ongoing struggles to humble you not to harden you.
When the battle raged for decades Israel wasn’t supposed to give up – even that was supposed to be a sign of God’s kindness. Imagine that all the nations had been wiped out in a few months.
The bodies would have piled up; the scavengers would have feasted and then suddenly run out of food, and begun to attack the people.
No, the fight would last longer out of the Lord’s kindness; the longer fight would also have to mean a longer dependence on the Lord.
The Lord is committed to you. He has sealed you with the holy spirit. He will not abandon you. The long fight is merely designed by him to deepen your dependence and your devotion.
Another barrier was desire
fight desire by trusting God’s goodness
(25-26)
There is no denying that some of the most physically beautiful objects that the Canaanites would have left behind were the idols that they had carved. Made with silver and gold, we know from Joshua 6 just how tempting it would have been to hold onto them. After all, they are very beautiful – can something so attractive be so wrong?
Perhaps there are things that you know the Lord hates, but you when you are honest you just have to admit that you find them irresistibly attractive.
Why do you think that the Lord hates them?
Good old American Heavy whipping cream has about 36% fat.
In the UK we have a whole series of creams that are worse for you than that:
Double cream has a minimum 48% fat. And as if that isn’t enough, clotted cream has at least 55% fat. It’s undeniably one of the best things about English cuisine.
There was a ad campaign that ran in the 1980’s in Britain to try to encourage us to buy more cream.
“naughty but nice”
Are there sins that to be honest you don’t want to fight. Like Achan in his tent you would rather hide them because you consider them naughty but nice.
Will you trust that the Lord is good? He wants you to get rid of it because not because he wants to destroy your pleasure, but because it will destroy you.
We have seen that the devil is quite happy to use any means available to you to manipulate you into thinking that sin si a good idea. He will make sin look so insignificant that we think it demands no attention.
He will make sin look so powerful that we think we could never stand against it.
He will make sin look so attractive that we think that live would not be worth living without it.
He will make sin look so advantageous that we think that we will be more effective even for God’s kingdom if we protect it.
Any lie will do.
The one thing that the devil desires that we never hear is the truth.
Sin is evil – it is only destructive – but it is also powerless before the Lordship of Christ. In Him we are able to stand. Resist the devil in Him, by the power of the spirit and He will flee from you in terror.
In the end Deuteronomy 7 is all about Jesus.
Who is the only one who has been single-minded in his devotion to the Father. Jesus
Who is the only one who would fight every temptation though it cost him his reputation, his friends, a fair trial, protection from the cup of God’s own wrath.
Who is the one who has called us to join the battle?
Who is the one who against whom nobody will one day be able to stand. All kings will fall at his feet. The devil himself will be disarmed.
Will you be devoted to him?
Will you trust that he is good and powerful and worthy of our single minded devotion?
The challengesof Multi-Ethnic Church outweighed by the gospel imperative
-
Ed Stetzer Over on the Gospel Coalition site starts a useful
conversation about the challenges and opportunities of being a multi-ethnic
church.
First, ...
10 years ago
