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A People Holy to the Lord Your God
A People Holy to the Lord Your God Deuteronomy 7:1-26 Key Verse: 7:6 “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.” In the previous passage we thought mainly about the commandment that Jesus claimed was the greatest commandment. That is, we must “Love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul and with all [our] strength.” As we thought about last week, this doesn’t seem to leave us much room to love anything else. However, upon closer examination, we discovered that this first and greatest command actually enables us to keep the second great command which together sum up all the law and the prophets of the Old Testament; i.e. we must love our neighbor as our self. Remember, if we love God above everything else, we will love what he loves, and the Bible clearly tells us that he loved each one of us enough to send His One and Only Son to die for us. Therefore, loving God with all our heart, soul and strength actually forces us to love our neighbor as our self. Today, we will be studying a very difficult and controversial part of the Bible. It is the part where God tells the Israelites to completely destroy seven nations. To many people today, this idea seems completely incompatible with an all loving God, and it is, in fact often used by atheists and Christian haters to argue against God. However, everyone who disagrees with this edict of God either has a wrong view of God or a lack of Biblical knowledge or, more likely, both. I think this passage could cover a series of three or more messages, but with God’s help let’s look at in just one message – I urge you to look further into some of the points that will be made today. May God bless our study of Deuteronomy 7 and give us a clear view of who He is and who He has called us to be. First, the inhabitants of the land (1). Let’s look at verse 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…” Verse 1 is not a complete sentence; it is the beginning of a long dependent clause. The interesting thing to note here is that the actual subject of the whole sentence is not the same as the subject of this dependent clause. What is the subject of this clause? The answer is “The Lord your God.” God is the one who is doing the two actions in this part of the clause (this is not just an English lesson; it is very important). God is bringing the Israelites into a land that they will possess and He will drive out the nations that are living there. This is important because God never makes a mistake. People make mistakes all the time, but God never does – keep that in mind for later. Who were the people living in this land? The Bible tells us their names, “The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. So who were these people? In order to answer this question you must have studied Genesis 10, 13-15. Genesis 10:15 is particularly instructive. In this one verse 6 of the 7 nations named here are listed. The only one that is missing is the Perizzites and I couldn’t find any good answer in the Bible as to who they were. The others were all the dependents of Ham, who was the father of Canaan, and who told his brothers about their father’s drunken nakedness. When Noah found out about this he cursed Ham through his son Canaan, and all these people listed here fell under that curse. Without going through chapters 13 & 14, I want to skip over to chapter 15 of Genesis. This is when God made his covenant with Abraham. God mentions six of the nations mentioned in this passage and he singles out one saying, “…for the sin of the Amorites has not reached its full measure.” All of these people were descended from a man who had dishonored his father (a very serious sin in God’s eyes), was placed under a curse, and who had rejected the worship of the one true God and had run after idols (some of those were so terrible that the people sacrificed their own children to them). They were people ready for God’s judgment. One other important fact about these people is given in verse 1. These people were “Seven nations larger and stronger than [Israel].” How were the Israelites to go in and take their land from them? Second, God delivers the nations over to the Israelites and tells them what they must do (2-5). The dependent clause we found in verse one continues in verse 2. The conclusion of the clause is “…and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them…” Everything that follows in this chapter (and in the Bible) is because of what God is doing. God is bringing the Israelites into the Promised Land to possess it, God is driving out the nations before them, and God is delivering these people over to the Israelites. This was God’s plan not the Israelites plan. The only plan the Israelites had was to get rid of Moses and go back to Egypt. However, God had chosen these people because of the faith of their forefathers and God was going to accomplish His plan. God had given them His law and had borne with them and sustained them for thirty-eight years in the wilderness because of their rebellion and disobedience to His command. God never gave up on them – they were His chosen people to reveal Him to the world. In order to do this God commanded them to do something that many people today find unbelievable. Look at the end of verse 2. “…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.” What? Can this really be the command of a loving God? Before we try to answer that question, I want to take a moment and look at everything that has happened in these first two verses and see if this fits us today. I believe we are God’s chosen people today, so give these questions some serious thought. Do you believe that this same God is in control of the world today? Do you believe that God is love? Do you believe that you are His chosen people? Do you believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Do you believe that we are preaching this message (the message found here in Deuteronomy 7)? These question are not easy to answer, right? Or are they? I believe the Bible wholeheartedly. In very simple terms, the Bible says, “God is good… and all the time….” Yet people choose not to have a relationship with a good God who not only wants to bless them, but who wants them to have an eternal relationship with Him in heaven. What happens when they choose not to accept this relationship? Isn’t it the same thing that God commanded the Israelites to do to these seven nations? Simply speaking, if you reject God you die, and this is the story of the Bible from beginning to end. Yet God gives everyone so many chances. How many chances has He given you? Do you think you are special? Even those Canaanites had been given chances to turn to God. I don’t know what those chances were or how they were revealed to them, but God knows what they were because He gave them those chances. Finally, He had determined that they had used up all their chances and now it was time for judgement. That time comes for everyone and that is what we preach as Christians. Yes, God is love and He loved us enough to send us His One and Only Son to die for us, but if we don’t accept that, then our ultimate end is the same as the people of these seven nations. Have you ever thought that you are actually preaching the message of Deuteronomy 7 to people as you were asking them to come to Christ for eternal life? You are. I said it before, God never makes a mistake – we do, but God does not. I also want to just briefly make a point here that is very important. God is love, but that is by no means the only thing that God is. God is justice. God is righteousness. God is patience. God is Good. Simply speaking, God is Who He Is. To be honest, I don’t have any idea what perfect love is, or what perfect justice is, or righteousness, patience or perfect anything is. However, God knows, and the Bible is clear that He did these things through the Israelites and, like it or not, he is still doing these things through Christians today – We may not use an actual sword, but we use the sword of the word of God. Before we move on to our key verse, I want to look at verse 5. “This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.” I found this very interesting. In verse 2 God had said “…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.” What more could the Israelites do to these people who they were to completely destroy? Well, God added: “Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.” In other words, get rid of their gods. I want to go back to chapter 6:4, which for the Jews was so important that they gave that verse a special name, the “Shema.” As Christians we need to accept this verse and give it the same importance that the Jews have given it. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” There is no other God! This is why these people had to be completely destroyed – they had other gods. These people would entice the Israelites to follow their gods. It is no different for people today – many follow the gods of this world rather than the One True God revealed in the Bible – they follow the gods of money, science, peace, happiness, a good family, etc. However, nothing in this world or in the heavens above is God. We must worship God alone and get rid of anything else that stands in His place. Third, a people holy to the Lord you God (6-29). 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.” When studying the “Old” Testament, that is what some people think about it today. It is “old,” and so it has no meaning for us today. I hope our previous question and answer session convinced you otherwise. This verse should be just as meaningful for us today as it was for the Israelites nearly 4000 years ago. Remember God’s word, that is Jesus, is “The same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). With this in mind, let’s look at the rest of this passage. Why did God choose the Israelites and us? Was it because they were so numerous and powerful that other people would stand up and pay attention to them? No. it was just the opposite. Verse 7 says that they were the fewest of all peoples. So why did God choose them? Look at verse 8. “But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors 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.” First of all, God chose them because He loved them. God chose us for exactly the same reason. God’s love for them had nothing to do with anything that they had done for God. They were slaves, and had mostly forgotten about God. There ideas about God had been completely corrupted by their stay in in Egypt. If you don’t believe me about this go back and look at the book of Exodus – they told Moses several times it would have been better to have stayed in Egypt and they even built a golden calf to be their God and to lead them. Yet God still loved them because he is a faithful God. Humans our unfaithful, but God is faithful. Verse 9 tells us that God always keeps His covenant and He shows love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. Abraham loved God and was even willing to sacrifice his own son at God’s command. Because of Abraham’s love for God, God was faithful to His promise to Abraham and his descendants and He rescued them from their bondage under Pharaoh. Who was Pharaoh? Pharaoh was the most powerful king on the face of the earth, but the Israelites were nothing but helpless slaves. They could do nothing on their own, but God could everything for them. God rescued them to demonstrate to them and the world exactly who He is. He is the faithful God who keeps His promises. However, God is more than this. Look at verse 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.” God is also a God of absolute justice and righteousness. This is what people then and now often forget. They like to think of God as a God of love, but they hate to think of him as a God of justice and righteousness. However, we can’t choose to worship just any god we make up in our head. Those gods are idols and those gods were exactly what those seven nations living in Canaan had set up and were worshipping for generation after generation. We must worship the God who is revealed in the Bible and that is a God of love and peace, but also of justice and righteousness. God will judge all of us according to what we have done (Rom. 2:6) even though He loves us. As I said at the beginning, this is a difficult teaching, but it is the Biblical truth and we must accept it. What then should our response be to this knowledge of who God is? Look at verses 11 and 12. “Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. 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 ancestors.” The passage goes on to tell what God would do for the Israelites if they were careful to follow God’s commands and decrees. If they did so, God would bless them and make them fruitful in all that they did, God would protect them from disease, and He would deliver into their hands those seven nations living in Promised Land who were more numerous and powerful than the Israelites. However, God also warned them in verses 16, 25 and 26 not to be tempted by the idolatry that the people of Canaan had fallen into. The bottom line is, the Israelites were God’s chosen people. They were chosen to reveal God’s glory, power and wisdom to the rest of the world. In order to do this, they had to keep God first and foremost in their hearts. They couldn’t let the idolaters living in God’s Promised Land continue to live among them. If they did, they would be tempted to worship their gods and forget about the One True God. The One True God is a God of love, but he is also a God of absolute justice and righteousness. The time for judgment had come for those seven nations, as it will come for all people living in the world today. I believe that each of us is also one of God’s chosen people. But we are not chosen to go out and conquer a specific land as the Israelites of Moses time were called to do. We are chosen to go out and conquer the whole world. The sword that God puts in our hands is not like the sword He put in the hands of the Israelites which was set in motion to “wipe out their names from under heaven” (v. 24). Our sword is even sharper. Our sword is the word of God and according to Hebrews 4:12, “The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” God is sending us out to slay the nations of unbelieving people with the truth of His word. Today’s passage is sometimes very difficult for modern Christians and other people to accept. Yet it is in no way contradictory to the God that we believe in and proclaim to the world. The Bible tells us that Jesus came to this world full of grace, to save everyone who will believe in Him. Yet the Bible also says that Jesus came full of the truth of God and that anyone who doesn’t accept Him stands condemned already because they haven’t believed in the name of God’s one and only Son (John 3:16-19). Just as the Israelites were God’s chosen people in the time of Deuteronomy, I believe that we are God’s chosen people of today. As such we must be a holy people and separate ourselves from the godless, pagan influences that are all around us today. That doesn’t me that we go around killing people, it means that we hold onto and preach the absolute word of God boldly in this generation. May God help us to do so. |
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