Lesson 6
The First Tokens of Grace – 2:2-23
One of the best ways of teaching is by example and the Scripture that we
have before us this evening in Deut. 2 is a divine lesson given by the
principles of example. God is going to
give an example to the nation of
We covered how this nation,
Here’s the problem. It would be
analogous to a believer today who has trusted the Lord at some point in his
life, who received a certain amount of training, background, maturity, and then
God calls him to do something. This
would be analogous to this point at Kadesh-barnea because this is the life work
of the nation. This is their
ministry. But they come to Kadesh-barnea
and they reject, they say no, we do not trust in God’s ability to work in
history to fulfill His promises exactly.
This basically is the problem of faith once again. We encounter this as believers because God
has given to us promises that we accept or reject daily. This nation was given a set of corporate
promises. These promises were I will take
care of you, I will help you into the land, all you have to do is take the
first step, move northward. They moved
northward and fell apart when they hit the test at Kadesh-barnea at which time
God says all right, you are not going to move northward and I want you to move
to the east of the
I want you to go down here and I want you to sojourn in this area, not
here. So they were out of fellowship
first because they failed the test. That
was the first thing that was wrong, they failed at Kadesh-barnea and this
automatically sends them to 38 long years of suffering. It would be 38 years before this nation would
be allowed to go into the land. The
sentence was passed in a very unique way because God said for every day that
you hesitated back here, every day that the spies were in the land, etc. I will
sentence you to one year exclusion from this land, this real estate. So you may own the land but you cannot occupy
your land. Although I have given you
titles to this property you can’t build your house on that property; you can’t
move in and take possession for 38 years.
This means that the entire generation of those that rejected would be
dead. So the first thing that was wrong
that led to this 38 year sentence was their failure to move into the direction
in which God was calling them.
Now there’s something else that comes in. That would have been bad enough, they could
have confessed their sin and be restored to fellowship and they could have
moved down south and sojourned under the care and protection of God. And they might have had an easier time had
they done this. But they didn’t do this. Not only were they under the sentence of the
38 year discipline, but they were also under another sentence of condemnation
because when God told them to go south they said no, we want to go north. They got clobbered; they tried a penetration
up through the wilderness of Paran and the wilderness of Zin and were
repulsed. Evidently, from the Scripture,
there was a heavy loss of life. So this
northward penetration failed and the military forces retracted to a place
around Kadesh and they circled and circled and circled and here is the place of
the wandering, when it should have been over here. The reason it was over here was because they
refused to heed this command to move south.
And they refused to heed the command for 38 years.
So in some sense you might say they were out on a limb for two
reasons. First the initial failure at
Kadesh-barnea and secondly after this failure God told them all right, I don’t
want you moving in the land but I’ll take you south; move south and I’ll handle
you over there. They said no, we don’t
want to go over there so they wound up a very miserable people for 38
years. What happened? After 38 years God is going to move them this
way. They’re going to start down at the
Gulf of Aqaba at a place called Ezion-Geber, which by the way is the place
where Solomon built his great naval fleet, where Solomon built such a
tremendous fleet that he was able to cover all of southern Africa, he was able
to move over to India, he was able to import such wealth for the nation Israel
that archeologists, when they discovered some of the evidences of Solomon’s wealth,
they were just astounded. Solomon was probably in his time, in his life the
richest man on earth. They had
tremendous stores of gold and this is why Israel was the envy of the ancient
world. People would walk through here
and say look, do you know what’s in that temple. Yes, we know what’s in that temple, there are
billions of dollars worth of gold. The
temple was lined with gold. If you
study archeology you see the use of this gold was fantastic. The fact that they used it so much in their
buildings indicates that they must have had tons of the stuff stored away near
the temple.
This is one reason you want to pay attention to your newspaper because
now that Israel has possession of Mt. Zion they are going to start excavataing;
they already have, and you watch because they are going to discover fantastic
things on Mt. Zion. Mt. Zion was an
Arab-Islam stronghold. Although the
mosque, the Dome of the Rock is right there on top of this hill, all on the
side of this hill archeologists can run what they call slits, which are small
trenches about 3-4 feet wide and they dig down cross section into the side of
this hill. Then they study the different
layers that have accumulated there.
This whole land at one time was very, very rich and it is to this land
that they are proceeding in Deut. 2.
There are going to be tremendous resources available. They’re going to start down at Ezion-Geber
and move north-northeast up through and along this highway. This is one way they’re going to try to move
and they are repulsed so they take a detour to the east. Actually they go in a
circuit; they make a northward penetration until they hit a stream. Then they
come down this stream bed and infiltrate into two kingdoms, one Sidon and one
the kingdom of Og and Bashan, Bashan and Sidon and they are going to conquer
these two kingdoms; after they conquer these two kingdoms, then the famous
story about crossing Jordan. Then Joshua
is going to try a three pronged military campaign. The first one he’s going to make a beachhead
in the land and split it in two. He’s
going to make a westward drive in which Jericho falls and a number of other
strongholds fall and with this he will have secured and split the Canaanite
military machine.
Once he drives westward and secures his beachhead then he’s going to go
southward, come around the Red Sea and move south and annihilate the whole
population, or at least subjugate it to his control. When he does this he will reverse his armies
and they will move northward and subjugate this. This is going to be the three phase campaign
of Joshua and it’s a very excellent campaign.
The present Israeli minister of defense, Mosha Dyan, actually is an
amateur archeologist and all during the Israeli-Arab conflict and the
newspaper articles that came out after that you may have read that Mosha Dyan
studied the Word of God, not as a believer necessarily but he studied the Old
Testament to understand how, for example, Joshua was able to infiltrate. And he designed the modern Israeli defense
based on the same system of Joshua’s conquest because the Arabs know how Joshua
hit the land and basically, from the military point of view there’s only one
way to invade Israel and that is to invade it from the east because of the
height of land here.
You must secure those heights of land and the Jordanian army and the
rest of them tried to do that in the Arab-Israeli war, they tried to move in
east. This was significant, and still is
significant as to why Israel wants to retain the land on the west side of the
Jordan valley. This was part of Jordan
at one time; now Israel has it and she doesn’t want to give it up. The reason is it’s a thorn in her side, she
realizes that whoever controls this can send terrorists, can send gorillas in,
etc. and do the same thing that Joshua did. So the tactics that you read about
in your Old Testament aren’t just tactics that aren’t just twenty centuries
old, these tactics are as modern as tomorrow and these tactics will be used
over and over. All you have to do is
study some modern work on Israel and you will realize how sensitive they
are.
This is a classical invasion campaign and it was taught to the people by
God originally. God revealed this
military campaign to Joshua by divine revelation. This is going to be the end goal of where
we’re moving; this is going to be the end goal of the book of Deuteronomy. But we’re coming back to where it all began
and God is going to encourage these people.
For 38 years they have known nothing but exclusion, defeat, discouragement
and after 38 years of this a people’s mental attitude begins to get shot. This is why it’s so hard as a leader to take
over a group of people that are used to defeat and move them because of their
mental attitude.
This is why in American history probably one of the greatest
achievements ever done in the field was done by Robert E. Lee after the battle
of Gettysburg, when the south was completely destroyed and he moved his armies
out of there and he saved the south’s army.
He did it in one of the most fantastic ways because Robert E. Lee was
able to do what very few generals in history have been able to do and that is
take a tattered, defeated, hurt, injured army and move fast, quickly and
efficiently out of the clutches of the enemy.
This takes a lot of leadership to do this because the people are used to
defeat, they want to give up, they want to surrender, they just want to end it
all and a leader has to overcome this attitude.
So this is the problem that we have before us and God is going to help
out the leadership. He’s going to do it
two ways. He is going to give them a
demonstration as they move up the east side of Jordan, He’s going to show them
some evidences that He will bless them.
The first evidence He is going to show is going to be these
kingdoms. As they move up here God is
going to show them a few little case studies and He’s going to take them on a
little “guided tour” and He’s going to say I want you to notice what I’ve done
over here, over here, here and here, because what God is going to do is say
look, I have acted here, here, here and here in accordance with My Word.
Lesson: I have given you promises, will you believe that I am going to
act on My promises to you in the same way that I have acted in accordance with
My word here, here and here. So here’s
where we’re moving in chapters 2 and 3; it’s a set of illustrations that God is
giving these people as they move northward and they are designed to overcome a
defeatist mental attitude. They are designed
to instill these people with the attitudes that they are going to be
victorious; there is no need to cry about it, they are going to win. God is trying to work on their mental
attitude and this is the lesson that we’re coming to in Deut. 2:2, “And the
LORD spoke unto me, saying, [3] Ye have compassed this mountain long enough;
turn you northward.” This mountain that
he’s talking about, although it’s singular, is what we might call a mountainous
terrain. Mountains rarely occur with one
just sticking up; they usually occur in a chain because of the geology that’s
involved in generating mountains. Let’s
look at the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba.
There is a chain of mountains here called Seir in the Bible; this is
where Edom dwelled, and God is going to move them this way. He’s moving them around and they are right
about here, the southern end of the Red Sea.
That’s where they are at verse 2.
Now watch what happens.
He says I want you to stop moving east and turn northward. You’ve compassed or you’ve surrounded this
mountain long enough and I want you to [verse 3] “command thou the people,
saying, You are to pass through the coast [or the boundary] of your brethren,
the children of Esau, who dwell in Seir, and they shall be afraid of you; take
ye good heed unto yourselves therefore.” they are going to move right along the
boundary of this people on up this way.
This is case example number one, and here is where God is going to tell
certain things about Edom that have repercussions in history and have vital
lessons for us today in how God works.
He’s going to tell them something about this nation and the background
begins in verse 5, “Meddle not with them; for I will not give you of their
land, no, not so much as a foot breadth, because I have given Mount Seir” of
the mountain range of Seir, “unto Esau for a possession.” What does this mean? This means that God has worked in history to
give this land to a certain group of people, and once God has sovereignly
worked in history it is His will that these people never be disturbed
again. This is the basis of
prophecy. Some of you have wondered
different aspects of prophecy. We’re going
to get into a little bit of prophecy in this book. But one of the foundations
of prophecy is that God can control the international situation. This is why prophecy says that there are
certain basic constants, certain things that never change throughout
history.
One of the things that will never change is the presence of national
entity known in Scripture as Gog; we know it today as Russia. These people are a group of people that will
always be there; they may come under a different name but they will always be
there. And prophecy says that at the
Second Advent of Christ Gog, the land of Gog, which is the Hebrew word for the
Russians, will be there and they will perform a certain role. You can make this analogy with many
groups. The United States is not
mentioned in Scripture and some people think it’s because the United States is
over the water, etc. but there’s no explicit mention of the various groups of
nations, just large regions. And these
large regions have a tremendous role in prophecy.
Edom is one such nation. It is a
constant; it is to be there until God removes it. Why?
To get the background of this we are going to turn back to Genesis 17
we’ll see why Edom is where it is tonight and the reason we’re doing this is to
show you the mechanics of history, to show you that history is not a random,
chance process but it has been designed by God to illustrate certain
points. In Genesis 17:5 we go back to
something in history known as the Abrahamic Covenant. The Abrahamic Covenant started God’s
prophetic movement through the nation Israel.
In Gen. 17:5 Abraham gets a new name and it’s this new name that we want
to examine to understand the mechanics of God’s operation in history.
Verse 5, “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name
shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.” The word is divided right here, “Abraham”
means father; “ram” is the word for height, so Abraham’s first name meant “the
father of high places.” Why? Because he came from a high mountainous
region to the north. But then his name
was changed to Abraham, and “raham” means multitude. So now God says you are not going to be known
as father of “ram”, or father of high places, you are now going to be known as
Abraham, father of a multitude. This is
kind of a stupid thing to promise to a man who was about 90 years old, whose
wife has never borne a child to him and who has no one in his family, and
someone comes along and says “you are going to be the father of a
multitude.” Oh yeah, show me.
This is a great test of Abraham’s faith; he is going to be the father of
a multitude. How is this going to
happen? Verse 6, “And I will make thee
exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out
of thee.” There’s the plural, “nations
of you.” How did this work out in
history? Abraham lived about 2000
BC. In 2000 BC Abraham finally, through
divine miracle, had a son. He actually
had two; he had Isaac and a man by the name of Ishmael. Ishmael was not his full son, he was legally
his son but Isaac was his true son. Out
of Ishmael the Bible says many of the Arab multitudes come. The reason why the Arabs are still in the
geographical area they are and they have still stayed there is because of
certain mechanics built into history by God through Ishmael.
Isaac, on the other hand, was to be the forerunner of the Jewish
race. Isaac in turn had married a woman
by the name of Rebekah, and he had two sons; he had Jacob and he had Esau. This is interesting because these two were
twins and yet one of these was a man who forsook his birthright, one who
claimed the birthright. Jacob then
becomes the carrier of the promises to Israel, Esau becomes a nation out of
this promise in Gen. 17, “I will make many nations of you.” One nation out of Jacob, Israel; one nation
out of Esau will be Edom, and the Edom that we see in Scripture, and this
happened about 1800 BC and this is 1400 BC so there have been four centuries of
development, so the nation Edom has been largely developed in history by God in
answer to His promise to Abraham. He
said Esau will be a nation and there are many Scriptures that show this, I am
just showing you the basic principle.
Abraham has been given a fantastic lineage in Scripture and out of his
lineage comes Edom and Israel. God is
going to protect this. The modern view
of history is that it is essentially a random process, it’s just chance. If you study history today you study it
usually from the statistical point of view, that it’s just a set of events
going on, nobody knows the direction.
Many times, I grant you, history does look like its random. But from the divine viewpoint history is not
random; history has a pattern to it and it’s this pattern that you want to pick
up from the Old Testament.
Now we want to look at another Scripture to understand some other
nations which we are going to see. We’ve
given the background of Edom. In Gen.
19:36-38 we have the background of two other nations that are going to come
into the picture. One is Moab, another
is Ammon. And Ammon and Moab again are
related to Abraham. “Thus were both,”
this is speaking of Ammon and Moab, “Thus were both the daughters of Lot with
child by their father. [37] And the first-born bore a son, and called his name
Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites unto this day. [38] And the
younger, she also bore a son, and called his name Ben-ammi: the same is the
father of the children of Ammon unto this day.”
Here you have the development of Moab and Ammon and to get the
connection we have to go back and see how these are related to Abraham. Here’s the family tree. It began with a man by the name of
Terah. Terah had three sons, he had
Abraham, he had a son by the name of Nahor which in the Hebrew means to snore,
so there was an interesting thing, I don’t know why he named his child “Snore,”
but he named his son “Snore,” and that is the name that he had down through
Bible history. Then he had another by
the name of Haran. These are his three sons.
Out of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac come; and out of Isaac, Jacob and Esau
come. Haran has a son called Lot, and
out of Lot comes Ammon and Moab. That’s the connection. You figure out the uncles, cousins, etc. You can take this family tree and figure out
who’s a cousin, and who’s uncle and who’s aunt.
That’s the tree that’s given in Scripture and this is how all these
people are related. They are very
important people and God is going to work in very interesting ways.
Turn back to Deut. 2 and we’ll see how He begins. Verse 5, “Meddle not with them; for I will
not give you of their land, no, not so much as a foot breadth, because I have
given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.”
The word “meddle” here is the Hebrew word which means to engage in a
battle. It is the Hebrew word gerah and gerah always is used for a military situation. So he said I don’t want you to conduct a
military offensive against this land, respect their boundaries because I’m not
going to give it to you, “I have given Mount Seir unto Esau for a possession”
Verse 6, “Ye shall buy meat of them,” God grants permission, He’s
telling them what they can and cannot do.
I might ask a question: is God going to work so they can’t meddle with
them? No, we’ve been covering the
doctrine of volition and when God gives His command in verse 5 is this command
saying that you can’t meddle with
them? No, because this would mean that
God would be twisting and coercing volition.
God never coerces volition, so this command “meddle not” is simply
addressed to the person, you can or cannot do it, you may obey or you may
disobey but I’m just telling you, verse 5, that if you disobey you’re going to
get clobbered because I’m not going to give you the land, you’re going to go
down to military defeat.
Now in verse 6 this is what you can do; you can “but meat of them for
money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also buy water of them for money, that ye
may drink.” In verse 7 we have the
reason why this is possible. You say
wait a minute, there are a million or two million people in this crowd coming
up the road and they have enough money to buy food and drink. How come these people have enough money when
they’ve been out in the desert for 38 years; where did they get their money
from? Verse 7 explains it, “For the LORD
thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand; he knows you’re walking
through this great wilderness. These
forty years the LORD thy God has been with thee, you have lacked nothing.” And what this means is that God has so
abundantly blessed them that they haven’t been able to spend a thing. You say where could they spend money anyway
out in the sandy hills of the Sinai Peninsula?
There were Midianites; there were all sorts of caravans moving through
the area, it was one of the great tourist routes and the great travel routes,
great trade routes of the ancient east.
So they could have bought many things.
God provided them with all sorts of things and they did not have to
spend a cent. So when they came into
this land they were loaded; they had all this money that they picked up in
Egypt. When they walked out of the
nation Egypt they just walked off with about 50% of Egyptian stock; when they
left Egypt they left Egypt in a state of devastation, and Egypt basically has
never been strong since them. This was
the decline of the middle kingdom in Egypt.
So the Jews, therefore, had a tremendous amount of wealth and this is
going to be used to buy on a peaceful basis.
You might say this is a peaceful coexistence taught in verse 6, and it’s
possible because God has blessed them.
Verse 8, “And when we passed by from our brethren, the children of Esau,
who dwelt in Seir,” now they’re touring around the land, they’re moving north
now, here they’re moving by Edom. When
we left “from Ezion-geber,” now he comes to the next section. Just to the north are the Moabites and he
says the same thing in verse 9. “And the
LORD said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in
battle; for I will not give thee of their land for a possession, because I have
given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession.”
Do you see what’s happening? Every one of these people has their own
possession given to them by God and no one can take it away. This is important as far as history
goes. This is why Adolf Hitler and a lot
of Protestants in Germany never got the message of Genesis [blank spot]
Christian cults today that teach anti-Semitism and I’m just telling you as a
friendly word of advice, don’t ever get mixed up with any of them, because if
you get mixed up with any form of anti-Semitism, you are asking God to judge
you personally, and you are asking God to judge this nation. Any form of anti-Semitism will always wind up
in a disaster. Why? Because God’s nation of Israel must remain in
history in order to fulfill prophecy.
When God comes down to the Second Advent there has to be a nation Israel
there because this prophecy has to come true because of the doctrine of God’s
sovereignty. So God is going to maintain
the nation.
I’m not saying that you have to be sentimental over every Jewish person
you meet. That’s not what I am saying. I
am saying that you have to respect them for their position. You may not like them but you have to respect
them and as a believer you are ordered by the Word of God to respect them. And
you are commanded by the Word of God never to engage in any form of
anti-Semitism. The Jews are a rock in history and we have to respect them. Any form of anti-Semitism is a direct slap in
the face of God. God has said that nation is going to stay there because I have
a plan for them and I am going to bless the world through them so Christians
would do best to just leave them alone and let them be there, and God will take
care of them. This is just a friendly
word because I have heard this on the radio, I have read pamphlets, I have
listened to various preachers who have advocated in the name of Jesus Christ
anti-Semitism. Don’t ever buy it, this
business that Jesus Christ wasn’t a Jew and that the ten lost tribes are the
United States and Great Britain, and all the rest of the nonsense. This doesn’t come from Scripture, this comes
from a lot of absurd, stupid interpretations of God’s Word and it’s a very
dangerous thing.
Edom is in the same boat; the Moabites are in the same boat and the
Moabites are the children of Lot. Now in
verse 10 we come to a very strange word, a word which actually if you were to
look this up you’d be very perplexed at the definition. “The Emim dwelt there in times past, a people
great and many, and tall as the Anakim. [11] Who also were accounted giants, as
the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim.”
What does all this have to do with the price of beans on Sunday? What’s this got to do with the subject that
we’re talking about? Verses 10 and 11
are going to fill you in on a group of people, a very strange group of people
who have disappeared in history. They’re
known as the Rephaim, and the word Rephaim is actually the word in your Bible
giant. That word “giant” isn’t really
giant, it’s Rephaim. And these Rephaim
are one of the strangest people, probably who ever lived on earth. They are a people who are a giant group very
similar to the Anakim. The Anakim were a
group of tall men who lived on the west side of Jordan. Here’s the Anakim headquarters, Hebron; The
Anakim were a group of people that not too much is known about but I showed you
how Goliath and these other giants are probably genetic descendants of this
race known as the Anakim. We traced it
through archeology and I showed you evidences from the potsherds of Egypt that
this race actually existed.
Tonight we come to a race over here.
This race is on the other side of the Jordan and it’s known as the
Rephaim. Why bring this in? Because of a
principle. When Israel comes up here and
starts to make their military penetration of the nation, who are they going to
face? They’re going to face giants;
they’re going to face a very terrifying group of people. What are they going to have by way of
training? They’re going to watch as they
go up along here and God is going to say look Israel, I want you to notice
something. Do you see this little nation
down here, Moab? A little two bit
nation when compared to yourselves, and do you know what these people, these
Moabites did? At one time in history
they conquered giants like you are going to conquer giants. There was a group
of people called the Rephaim, they call them Emim here in verse 10 and these
little people went in there and they conquered them. Why did they conquer them? Because I gave them promises. I gave them grace; it was a result of My
program.
Now Israel, when you get into the land what are you going to do? Are you going to flunk like you did last time
you tried to move in from the south or are you going to take lessons? Are you going to notice very carefully as you
move along this road and you look off and look at the land and you study the
people and you notice their culture, their history and their language, and you
all of a sudden realize that these Moabites weren’t there all the time, and you
ask these people what’s your history.
And the Moabite says I’ll tell you what our history was, we were the
sons of Lot and God promised to give us this land and when we moved in here we
had a fight and we won and we beat these people and we annihilated them. And
Israel is going to say oh, you did, how big were these people? They were real
big.
And Israel is going to remember this and then they’re going to north to
another nation and they’re going to say what’s your history? Oh, there were giants in the land before and
we moved in and we defeated them. Gee,
that sounds like what God wants us to do.
No kidding! In other words
through this thing God is going to teach these people an object lesson. He is going to argue this way, if I have
allowed these little nations to move in and conquer giants, how much more
Israel will I let you go in and conquer your giants. This is going to be a way in which he’s going
to psychologically prepare the nation.
Now let’s look at a few things about the Rephaim to get an appreciation
for just what the problem was. They lived
northeast of the Jordan valley; the reference for this is Gen. 14:5. They lived about the time of Abraham and were
all in this whole area. In this case we
don’t have much archeological data. It’s hard to have any kind of digs over
here east of the Jordan River. The
second thing about the Rephaim that you want to remember is that the word was
used both for a group and part of the group.
The Rephaim was actually one tribe of these people. For example, like the American Indians, you
have the Navajo’s and you have the various other Indian tribes. These Rephaim were divided up into
tribes. One was called the Rephaim;
another was called later on in history the Zamzummims, we’ll just call them the
Zams. There the Emims, so you have the
Rephaim, the Zams and the Emims and these were the three tribes.
Evidently the Rephaim dominated and finally their name came to be
associated with the whole group. Just
like in New York State there are various Indian tribes and one of the greatest
is the Mohawks. You read in history the
Mohawks dominate, and really they didn’t, they were one tribe and yet many of
the Indians in central New York State are called Mohawks. This is just one word that has been applied
to the rest of them. So the Rephaims, the Zamzummims and the Emims. They all form these three tribes. What was their history?
The third thing you want to remember about them was that they had a
three-fold way in which they were eliminated.
The Emims were eliminated by Moab.
Moab came in and destroyed these, so there’s one of your tribes
shot. Then the Zams, they were shot by
Ammon; Ammon came in and destroyed these people, so they were gone. This left the Rephaim to the north, the
original group and these, by this time, evidently as we saw through the Anakim
they were genetic freaks. And genetic
freaks do not have a great viability and they die off. So these people were unable to reproduce in
some way, perhaps sterility, etc. and they died off until the time in which we
come to the Bible when the Jews moved up into this third area, here’s the Sea
of Galilee, here’s the Dead Sea, your Emim dwelt here, your Zamzummims dwelt
here and your Rephaim here. These two were eliminated, they walked up to this
area and there was only one man left of this tribe, the last of the Rephaim.
And Israel was given the privilege of destroying this man.
Just to give you an idea of the size of this man, his bed was thirteen
and a half feet long and six feet wide.
This gives you an idea, this man was known in history as King Og. Either he felt uncomfortable because he had
long feet and they hung over or he was a very tall man and needed this great
length. This has been indicated in
Scripture to give us an idea of the man’s stature. We gave evidences that such people did live in
history. These people live and we have
fragmentary evidence that such people actually existed. So when you read these stories about giants
in the Bible, this was a real test to these people. If you walk out the door and see some guy
like this and you have this little brass spear in your hand and you get an idea
of what kind of a test these people face.
This was a real test these people had.
For example, Goliath was a real test.
When it says his spear weighed a hundred pounds, you figure it out; here’s
little David coming up to him. This is a
real test; it’s not some fairy story that’s cranked up in Sunday school. This is a real scriptural story given in
God’s Word.
These giants were a fantastic group of people and they were annihilated
systematically in history, giving an object lesson for Israel. Verse 13, “Now rise up, said I, and get you
over the brook Zered. And we went over
the brook Zered.” Zered, by the way, is
a boundary line north of Edom. Now
they’re going to move north, here’s Edom down here in the south, they’ve moved
around Edom, not they’re going to move by these two lands where these giants
dwelt.
Verse 14, “And the space in which we came from Kadesh-barnea, until we
were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years.” Do you see a principle in that verse, a very
interesting principle, that Scripture, when it speaks about an historical event
is perfectly accurate? Perfectly
accurate! And this is what distinguishes
Bible prophecy from say a scientific prediction. I was involved in weather forecasting for
several years and we gave predictions and we tried to be as accurate as we
could. But even the most accurate
weather forecast is in terms of probability.
You can only say given certain conditions this will happen, probably. That’s the strongest statement you can make,
but when God’s Word prophecies it says exactly what will happen.
For example, the Palm Sunday episode of Jesus Christ. What was Jesus Christ riding on? He was riding on a donkey. Do you realize that’s an answer to
prophecy? Zechariah says when Messiah
comes He will come through the east gate and He will be riding a donkey. These people, as Messiah came down the
street, were throwing palms in His way and singing Hallelujah, which was from
Psalm 118 and they recognized He was God; they recognized He was Messiah. Of course they didn’t fill in all the details
but they knew exactly what the significance of that man riding in on a donkey
was. It wasn’t some strange character
with long hair, some revolutionary coming in the east side of Jerusalem. They knew exactly what it was because
prophecy is exact.
Here is another prophecy that is exact in verse 14, God said you are
going to be out of the land thirty-eight years, exactly and on the
thirty-eighth year to the day they started to move northward. And that is a sign. This is a sign of the exactness of
Scripture. Never, never undersell Scripture.
Don’t try to fudge interpretation. One
of the things that comes up all the time in evolution is that Christians get so
uneasy with this thing that they start to fudge Scripture. You don’t have to fudge Scripture, just let
the Scripture speak, be honest. The
world has a right to ask questions and we have the obligation to give answers
and any answers we can’t give we ought to admit we can’t give them. But we have to be honest with the text. So to be honest with the text in verse 14
means that we simply acknowledge prophecy and statement in history about
history and science are exact.
Verse 15, “For indeed the hand of the LORD was against them, to destroy
them from among the host, until they were consumed.” Evidently at this time the last man died,
right at this point. In other words, all
men twenty or over, draftable age in Israel was 20 and all these men in the
army that said no, they’re all going to have to die, whether they have wives,
children or anything else, the men that were involved in this thing are going
to have to die. Evidently the last one
dropped dead right there. So this time they begin to move north and things
begin to produce and here, analogous to the Christian life, you have the
believer back in fellowship and back producing for Christ.
Verse 17, “That the LORD spoke unto me, saying, [18] Thou art to pass
over through Ar, the coast of Moab, this day. [19] And when you come near over
against the children of Ammon, distress them not, nor meddle,” there’s the word
for engage in battle, “don’t engage them in combat, for I will not give thee of
the land of the children of Ammon any possession, because I have given it unto
the children of Lot for a possession.
Verse 20 is your fill-in. “(That
also was accounted a land of the Rephaim” not giants, Rephaim, it’s a proper
name, “Rephaim dwelt therein in old time, and the Ammonites call them the
Zamzummim.” These are the Zams I was
talking about. [21] “A people great and
many, and tall as the Anakim, but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they
succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead. [22] As He did to the children of
Esau, who dwelt in Seir, when He destroyed the Horites from before them; and
they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead even unto this day.”
Why is all this account of destruction, destruction, destruction? Because God is trying to show these people
something. He’s trying to show them a
principle, if I have done this to the least of nations, how much more Israel
will I do it for you.
Verse 23, “And the Avvim, who dwelt in Hazerim, even unto Gaza, the
Caphtorim, who came forth out of Caphtor, destroyed them, and dwelt in their
stead.)” The Caphtorim are another group of interesting people, these are the
Greeks. And it’s one of the strange
things but the Greeks, the ancient Greek civilization of history spilled out,
broke out of the eastern Mediterranean periodically. One of the breakouts of a Greek related
people are known to you in the Bible as the Philistines. Why is it that the Philistines were such
vicious warriors? Because they were
essentially related to the Greek noblemen, and the Philistines play a
tremendous role in history. So even
these people, those who came forth out of Caphtor, which is either the word for
Greece or Crete, I can’t decide which because the evidence is ambiguous here at
this point. They came out of Caphtor and
destroyed them.
Summary, this is the end of the passage tonight because in verse 24 we
are going to get into the second token of grace. This first token of grace that we discussed
tonight is a series of object lessons on these nations that have
conquered. Next week we are going to
discuss nations that Israel conquers, and God is going to say here Israel, let
Me just give you a little trial. Before
you hit the big time, let Me just let you rub out a few small nations that are
on My list. Israel says okay, and they
go in there and annihilate a few nations to get them in practice before they
move to the big time and move over into the land of Israel.
This first token of grace is important because it witnesses to the
validity of God’s promises. This means as
believers when God promises you something He will always come through. We all
fail and we all distrust God and we all say no God, isn’t going to answer His
promise. But we know God will answer His
promise and a part of Christian maturity is that we become more and more
proficient at trusting God when the times get tough. I read a couple letters from boys in
Vietnam. Those boys admitted that the
only thing they had to move on was not on the basis of emotion; it was not on
the basis of some good time they had in youth fellowship in their church, it
was because of what they carried up here; doctrine from the Word of God that
they had carried away and memorized, and when the going got tough, that’s the
only thing that held them together, because the fight was in the area of the
mind before it was in the area of overt activity.