4-28-13. Deuteronomy 7:1-26. DON’T COMPROMISE WITH IDOLATRY- my devotional

Deuteronomy 7:1-26                                                                                Kevin E. Jesmer 4-28-13

Key Verse: 7:6-7                                             (Following the text used in “Whiteman’s Gospel”)

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. ⁷ It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,” (ESV)

Dear Lord, thank you for the Lord’s Day. Thank you that we could come together in fellowship and in worship of you. What a blessing is the Christian church. May the Gospel mature in all of our hearts. Lord, I want to write devotions on the Bible passages touched upon on the book, “Whiteman’s Gospel.” Help me to get a deeper appreciation on what you are doing among the Native people of Canada. Teach me something deeply today. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen!

Part 1: God’s Treasured Possession (1-10)

God wants us to worship him alone. Verses 1-5 reads, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. ³ You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, ⁴ for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. ⁵ But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.

These verses are very harsh. Basically this tribe, the Israelites were told to enter a land and completely lay waste the people that live there. We think this is horrible. But at that time the people were worshipping Baal and Molech and the like. As part of their worship they were engaging in orgies and idol worship and even human sacrifice. They were employing of extreme acts of cruelty in war and slavery. They had rejected God’s call to repentance for centuries. They were not going to change. It was time for judgment to come upon them and God worked through the Israelites to bring about his judgment on the people. If we know the whole history of these civilizations we can understand why judgment had to come upon them. Think about the Nazi’s in WW11. Do we think that we should have respected the Nazi culture and protected their right to live and operate as they were doing in Europe? No way. They needed to be stopped at any cost. The justice and truth of God must prevail.

This passage also deals with how we must deal with idol worship in our own hearts. We can not set up idols or worship idols in our hearts and minds. They must be torn down. They must be eradicated by the power God. Our worship of Christ must remain supreme. There must be nothing getting between us and the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our God is a jealous God. He wants our entire hearts. He wants to reign as Lord and King over our entire heart soil. He is worthy of such devotion and worship for his our Creator and Sustainer. He is the holy God. He loves us and he wants to grow the fruit of life within. He wants to bring each of us home to the everlasting kingdom of God.

God called this little known tribe as a holy, chosen nation. Verses 6-8, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. ⁷ It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, ⁸ but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

God sent his One and Only Son into this world through a tribal group. The decedents of the Jacobs formed the 12 tribes of Israel. Genesis 49:28 reads, “ All these are the twelve tribes of Israel. This is what their father said to them as he blessed them, blessing each with the blessing suitable to him.” (ESV)  God blesses unknown, tribal people.

The Jewish people came from a history trouble, trials and a literal fight for their survival. They were subjected to the domination of other cultures and nations and they suffered a lot under their domination. Jesus came from a minority group. The Israelites were the fewest of the few. They were numerically at the bottom of the ladder. But God chose the fewest of the few, the lowest of the low, the smallest of the small, to be the channel for bringing his incarnate Christ into the world. Like the Israelites, the Native people came from a history of suffering. They suffered at the hands of the dominate culture for centuries. They are members of various tribes. They are fighting for their land and their cultural identity. They are fighting for their survival. In general, many of their members are operating on the lowest strata of society. There are so many connections between the ancient Israelites and the Native people. (Whiteman’s Gospel p.10-13)

But we can see through this passage we learn that this is the type of people that God chooses to call his own and work through. God wants to call such people to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. He wants to make such people to be a light to the rest of the world. Through human weakness God wants to make his majesty known to the nations.

God’s people are holy, not because of anything we have done. It was not because they had any innate goodness or any human quality that made them worthy of his choosing. It is purely because God chose them– They were chosen by God’s grace alone. He brought them out of slavery because of his covenant with Abraham.

God called me to be a member of his kingdom. He called me to declare his glory to the ends of the earth. But who am I? I have no credentials. I live in a humble home in a quiet suburb of a quiet Midwest college/corn town. I have no Phd. I have barely any texts and e-mails coming to my phone for advice. I do not have the authority to voice things within the church. I am very low on the totem pole. My life on this planet is more than half over. But God chose me to be part of the kingdom of priests. It is only by the grace of God. By God’s grace I have an identity and a mission and a calling and a daily reason to get up each morning. He has called me so that he can work through me to change the course of history. I want to bring glory to Jesus and pray for the expansion of his kingdom.

This calling should make us extremely happy. This calling should never make us proud or self righteous. Gratitude and humility and worship should be the fruits of accepting such a calling.

There are many benefits to being a called into God’s glorious kingdom. Verses 9-10, ^“Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, ¹⁰ and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” Do we want to change the course of history for our nation, our people and even our own family? Then we must come to Jesus and enter into the new covenant through repentance and faith in the shed blood of Jesus. Then our people will be blessed for many, many generations. I came from a heritage of weekend binge drinking, smoking, endless traveling with no point, with emotional isolation from kids and spouse and agnosticism. This heritage was causing me to live as a hedonistic person, ruining my mind and heart, body and spirit. But God stopped me in my tracks. He helped me to accept the Gospel and he changed my life and my kids’ lives. I know that they will be blessed for many generations to come because of Julie’s and my stand on Jesus. God changed the history of this branch of the Jesmer family tree.

Part 2: Obey God’s Word (11-26)

There is much blessing to being in a right relationship with God. Look at verses 11-16, “You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today. ¹² “And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. ¹³ He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. ¹⁴ You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. ¹⁵ And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. ¹⁶ And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.”

It is not easy to be a Kingdom of priests and a holy nation. It is a high calling. If they follow God’s word and obey his laws, he will keep his covenant of love which he made with Abraham and bless them in everything they do. They will prosper in every way, not because they are able, but because of God’s blessing.

Nowadays we do not have to obey the law to be saved. We need to be found in Jesus through faith in his blood. He died so that we can be forgiven of our disobedience to the law. Being in Christ, through faith, is the like winning the lottery. We are recipients of God’s steadfast love. He will bring blessing and healing to his people who remain in him. I am not talking about health and wealth Christianity. I can testify that since coming to Christ in 1986 Jesus has done nothing but bless our family and our kids. The blessings of God never seem to cease. I need to be ready to embrace suffering and even sickness and death one day, but in Christ these can be counted as blessings also for it means I can become more Christ-like and see my Savior face to face. (But there is truth in the fact that they more we obey the principles of the word of God, there is a much greater chance of being successful in this world. It is true.)

   God gives his people hope. Look at verses 17-26, “If you 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 what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, ¹⁹ the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. ²⁰ Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. ²¹ You shall not be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. ²² The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. ²³ But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. ²⁴ And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. ²⁵ The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God. ²⁶ And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destructionlike it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.”

These nations needed to be disposed because of their heinous forms of idol worship and rejection of God. These nations seemed to be too strong. But God would go ahead of them. When the Israelites dispose them, they must not covet gold and silver or take any for themselves. They must trust God’s love and power and maintain God’s blessing. They must keep their hearts pure.

Now, in this New Testament age we must never fight against nations in a literal sense. But we need to fight a spiritual battle in our own hearts. The power of sin seems so strong. We can not get out of our vices and sins. But God will overpower them by the power of the gospel. When we are set free, our hearts can not turn back to the things that bound us in the past. We can not miss them. But we must turn our hearts heavenward and live for the glory of God. This is our calling as a member of a holy nation.

Prayer: Lord, help me to obey your word and live in Christ as a member of your holy nation of redeemed people.

One Word: God’s call to his holy nation of believers is a blessing.