|
|
The Lord Your God Will Fight for You!
The Lord Your God Will Fight for You! Deuteronomy 2:1-3:29 Key Verse: 3:22 “Do not be afraid of them; the Lord your God himself will fight for you.” In last week’s passage Moses began one of his final speeches to the Israelites before they were to enter the Promised Land. Moses began with a history lesson. He began this lesson when the Israelites were at Mt. Horeb (or Mt. Sinai) after God had brought them out of Egypt with an overwhelming show of power. God told the Israelites to leave Mt. Horeb and go north into what we know today as Israel and begin to take possession of the land that He had promised to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants forever. The Israelites obeyed. However, when they got to the border of this Promised Land, they sent out spies to search out the land. When the spies returned, all but two of them brought back a bad report saying, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are… The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” This discourage the entire Israelite community and they refused to obey God and go in and conquer the land. Instead, they just grumbled in their hearts and gave into despair. They actually thought that God, who loved them enough to free them from bondage in Egypt to bring them to this land, hated them and wanted to kill them using these “Nephilim.” So they refused to obey God and refused to fight. When they did this, God became angry and said that no one from that generation, 20 years old or older, would enter the land except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun because they had followed the Lord wholeheartedly. God then told them to turn around and head back south, toward the Red Sea. Once again the Israelites decided it would be a good idea to disobey God and they decided that now they were ready to go and fight. Moses told them not to because God would not be with them, but they went anyway. They were completed defeated by their enemies and were “chased like a swarm of bees and beat down from Seir all the way to Hormah.” This is where are passage begins today. In this passage, Moses completes his history lesson. In this passage there are two major actions that take place, but the real lessons come from meeting the relatives of the Israelites, the Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites. Through their stories, we can see what happens when God is on your side. If God decides to bless you and give you something there is nothing that can stand in the way of that happening, not even giants. Moses impressed this upon the Israelites to encourage them go in and fight against the giant people living in the Promised Land, precisely because God had promised to give them that land. Today’s history lesson is really summed up best by Paul in Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” May God open our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can learn this very powerful spiritual lesson today. First, the wanderings in the wilderness (1-3) This first section is very short; it only covers 3 verses. However, these three verses cover about 38 years of time. Let’s look at verse 1. “Then we turned back and set out toward the wilderness along the route to the Red Sea, as the Lord had directed me. For a long time we made our way around the hill country of Seir.” After disobeying God, not once but twice, the Israelites did obey God. They turned around and headed back toward the Red Sea as the Lord had directed Moses. However, this was not just a simple change in the route they were to take into the Promised Land. This was the beginning of 38 years of punishment for the Israelites. They had refused God’s command to go up and take possession of the land He had promised to give them. Because of this, God said, “No one from this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your ancestors.” The evil generation that God was speaking of were all those 20 years old and older – these were the generation of fighting men who were counted in a census before they set out from Mt. Horeb (see Numbers chapter 1). The last sentence of verse one simply says that they had made their way around the hill country of Seir for a long time, but a careful reading of the text will show you that this “long time” was, in fact, about 38 years. If you look over at verse 7, Moses says that they had been journeying in the wilderness for 40 years. And again in verse 14 Moses says that 38 years had passed from the time they had left Kadesh Barnea. Verse 14 goes on to state the important part, “By then, that entire generation of fighting men had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn to them.” Although they had obeyed God and turned around, it hadn’t turned out as many of them might have expected. They had sinned and they had to suffer the consequences of that sin. For those people it meant 40 years of wandering around in the wilderness as a whole generation slowly died off. As I said, this section is very short, but it contains in it a very grave warning about the consequences of sin. Romans 6:23a says, “For the wages of sin is death,” and verse 1 here confirms that. We must understand that sin has consequences. Disobedience to God is very serious and it must be dealt with by a holy and righteous God. Many Christians like to fall back on Romans 6:23b “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” but they never really take the time to think about the consequences that Jesus had to face to give us that gift. Please understand the seriousness of sin and do your best to obey God no matter how difficult the task he has given you may seem. Second, Israel’s relatives (4-23). In these verses we are introduced to three groups of people who are closely related to the Israelites. Look at verses 4 & 5. “Give the people these orders: ‘You are about to pass through the territory of your relatives the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own.” The first question we must ask is who is Esau. Esau was Jacob’s older twin brother. His father, Isaac, loved him because he was a good hunter and Isaac loved to eat the animals that he hunted. However, Esau didn’t always have a good sense of the value of certain things. For instance, one day he came home from a hunting trip and he hadn’t eaten for a while. His brother Jacob was cooking a pot of stew and when Esau smelled that he really wanted some. Jacob was a very clever man and he really wanted to succeed in the world, so he decided to bargain with Esau to see what he could get out of him. When you bargain, you usually start off by asking for something you know the other person won’t give you and work your way down to get something you want, even though it may not be what you started with. So Jacob said, “I’ll give a bowl of this stew if you give me your birthright” – In those days, the oldest son inherited twice as much as his younger siblings and they were considered the head of the family, that was the birthright. Esau didn’t value his birthright as he should have and simply gave it away to Jacob. God saw the characters of these two young men and he chose Jacob to be the heir of the covenant he made with Abraham and not Esau. However, because Esau was a descendant of Abraham, God still blessed him and his descendants, the Edomites, by giving them the land of Seir as their own. God warned the Israelites not to provoke them to war, because they would get nothing out of it. God had given the Edomites that land and what God gives, no one can take away unless God allows it. In verse 7 Moses reminds the Israelites how much God had done for them. They had been wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years, yet they lacked nothing. In fact, they had plenty of gold and silver to buy the food and water they needed from the Edomites. It is interesting to note that verse 4 says the Edomites were already afraid of the Israelites. If you look over at verse 25, the Lord says that beginning with the war with Sihon the fear of the Israelites was going to descend on the land, but the Edomites already had this fear. If you go back to Numbers 20, you will see that the Edomites refused Israel entry into their land, so the Israelites actually had to change course and go around their land. This can be seen in verse 8, “So we went on, away from our brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir, away from the Arabah road from Elath and Ezion-geber.” When they went around the Edomites they ran into another group of people, the Moabites. Once again the Lord warned them not to go to war with these people because they were also related to them. The Moabites and the Ammonites who lived next to them were the descendants of Lot, Abraham’s nephew. Lot had traveled with Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans all the way to the land of Canaan. When they reached the land of Canaan, God not only blessed Abraham abundantly, but He blessed Lot as well. God blessed them both so much that they had to separate because their flocks and herds were too large for the land to support if they stayed together. When they separated, Lot made a poor decision and moved into the land around Sodom and Gomorrah. From there, Lot’s life went downhill pretty fast. None-the-less God honored Lot’s decision to follow his uncle and serve the one true God in a foreign land and God gave his descendants land of their own. The Israelites never really got along well with any of these people, but God used these people to teach the Israelites two very important lessons. The first I have already mentioned, If God gives you something no one but God himself can take that gift away from you. The second lesson can be found twice. First in verses 10-12 and then again in verses 20-23. Let look at these verses. First 10-12 “The Emites used to live there—a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites, but the Moabites called them Emites. Horites used to live in Seir, but the descendants of Esau drove them out. They destroyed the Horites from before them and settled in their place, just as Israel did in the land the Lord gave them as their possession.” Now 20-23 “That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites. They were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place. The Lord had done the same for the descendants of Esau, who lived in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites from before them. They drove them out and have lived in their place to this day.” Do you notice anything interesting about these verses? Notice the people that the Moabites and Ammonites had to drive out in order to take possession of the land. The people were strong and numerous and they were really big. They were just like the people living in the Promised Land that the spies reported on 38 years before. The Moabites and the Ammonites were probably much like the Israelites were then – they were wandering groups of people with no homeland of their own. Yet they fought these big strong giants and drove them out of the land and took it for themselves. Moses also mentions that the Edomites did the same thing to the Horites in the land of Seir. The Horites are not described as being giants like the Emites and Zamzummites, but the Edomites drove them out anyway. These were Israel’s cousins. If they could drive out the people who were living in their lands, then the Israelites could certainly drive out the people in the Promised Land. When I think about God’s great world mission plan, I am often times overwhelmed by just how great it is. How can we accomplish it? There are too many giants out there stopping us from getting it done. It is easy just to fall into despair and do nothing. But God, in his great wisdom has given us a great cloud of witnesses to show us that we can do it if we simply believe His promises and obey him wholeheartedly. The Bible is full of examples showing us this, but what is even better is that even today we have great examples to look up to. This ministry that we are a part of is one of the best examples. God used just a handful of young Koreans who had no money or special abilities, but who did have absolute faith in the Gospel and God’s world mission calling to literally send missionaries all over the world. We need this same faith. God can and wants to use us to do great things, but we need to have absolute faith in His promises and wholehearted obedience. Third, the defeats of Sihon and Og (2:24-3:20). After being reminded of what their relatives did, the Israelites were now ready to begin their own fight for their land. This would start on the east side of the Jordan with two Amorite kingdoms. When I learned that these two kings were Amorites I was immediately reminded of something I had read back in Genesis. In Genesis 15, when God established his covenant with Abraham, he said that he would bring his descendants back from Egypt to this land when the sin of the Amorites had reached its full measure. That time had come. This time the Israelites did not disobey God. They fought two kings who had fortified cities and large armies and they completely defeated them. They killed all the people and destroyed their cities. It may seem harsh, that they had to kill every man, woman and child, but these were very sinful people who worshipped made up God’s. The Israelites were to be God’s people, to shine the truth of God throughout the world. They had to be holy and live holy lives just as God is holy. They couldn’t have the corrupting influence of these people among them. Fourth, the Lord your God will fight for you (21-29). After defeating the two kings Moses divided up the land between the Reubenites, Gadites and half of the tribe of Manasseh, but he told them that their fighting men needed to cross the Jordan along with the rest of the Israelites and fight until their brothers also had their own lands. Then Moses turned his attention to Joshua son of Nun. Look at verses 21-22. “At that time I commanded Joshua: “You have seen with your own eyes all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings. The Lord will do the same to all the kingdoms over there where you are going. Do not be afraid of them; the Lord your God himself will fight for you.” Why did he turn his attention just to this one man. It was because Moses knew he could not cross the Jordan with these people and continue to lead them. God would not permit him to do this because Moses had not honored God’s name as he should have when the Israelites were in the desert of Zin and had no water. Israel needed a leader, so God commanded Moses to commission Joshua for this task. Look at verse 28. “But commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead this people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see.” Who was Joshua? Joshua was one of the 12 men who had spied out the land 38 years before. He, along with Caleb, believed in God’s promise and were willing to obey Him wholeheartedly. God honored Joshua and Caleb and enabled them to survive the desert wanderings. (Caleb was about 80 years old (see Joshua 14) and I’m assuming Joshua was slightly younger and that is why God chose him to be the leader.) God knew that the Israelites needed a leader who had unshakable faith in His promises and wholehearted devotion. Yet Joshua still needed encouragement and strengthening according to God. Moses did this by reminding Joshua of what God had just done to two Amorite kings and promising that the Lord would do the same thing in the Promised Land to the kings over there. The key was to remember that God himself would be fighting for them. This is also the key for our life of faith. As I’ve mentioned before, the great commission that God has given us seems to be impossible. Heck, sometimes it seems impossible just to get through the day at work, let alone conquering the world. But no matter what we are doing, we always must remember that God loves us and he is fighting for us. On our own, we can do nothing, but with God on our side there is nothing we can’t do. In this passage we learned two very important things about God. First he is a faithful God, who gives good gifts even to people who we may not think deserve it. And once God has given a gift, no one can take it away except God himself. Second, and most importantly, it is God himself who fights for us. If God is fighting for us there is nothing that we cannot do. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” |
| 
|
