Lesson 7
The Second Token of Grace – 2:24-3:7
We are in the section of Deuteronomy known as the historical prologue, a
group of four chapters which are a framework to give you an introduction to the
Law. When we get to the Law we are going
to see very interesting things but we won’t get to the Law until the 5th
chapter, but when we get to the 5th chapter we’ll see the Law in the
way in which it should be applied.
Christians can use the Law lawfully, there is a way in which we can use
the Law in our Church Age but we have to understand how to use it as
believers. We’ll see that and we’ll go
into the background of American law and you will see as we approach the Law in
the Old Testament how law in the concept of law in our society is breaking
down, and how since between 1930-1935 the concept of law in the United States
has undergone a tremendous change. We
will see how one Supreme Court justice said this: “There is nothing more certain
in modern society than the fact there are no absolutes.” That is an expression of basic law
today. It is an expression as given
forth by Oliver Wendell Holmes who was a Supreme Court justice just after the
turn of the century when he said, “Law is not an absolute at all, in fact
people who think law is absolute are naďve; what law is is simply a prophecy of
what the courts are going to do.” In
other words, law is nothing; law is not related to anything transcendent.
The Old Testament has a tremendous importance to our time, and how for example
if we were in a Bible class before 1930 we couldn’t make some of the
applications we’re going t make now but since 1930 and since the collapse of
the absolute concept of law in the United States we can have many, many
additional applications. As believers
who are Christian citizens, when we vote for political offices, when we are
active in our own spheres of influence, we can press forward in certain
channels that are defined in the Law, and we have a mandate from God to so do. So therefore the importance of the Law is
tremendous in our day.
But before we can get to the Law we have to understand the first four
chapters because these four chapters give you the historical setting in which
the Law was given and you cannot appreciate the Law unless you first appreciate
these four chapters. The big lesson out
of these four chapters is that grace precedes Law. We often think of the Church Age as the age
of grace, coming after the age of Law, but these four chapters are to show you
that actually grace precedes Law because God spilled out His grace in
tremendous volume to this nation in these four chapters. And after He did this, then He gave them the
Law. The Law was given to a people who
understood grace.
You never want to forget this, because by the time we come to the New
Testament something happened. When Jesus
Christ faces the Pharisees something radical had happened in history. The Pharisees have completely changed the
concept of Law and we have to understand this.
Otherwise what is going to happen is that as we as believers read the
epistles, say Galatians, and we study Colossians, Ephesians and many of these
wonderful New Testament epistles, and we read these diatribes against the Law,
we’re going to think that the Law is useless.
And that’s what I’m trying to prevent, I’m trying to show you that when
these epistles were written, by that time in history Law, the principle of Law,
had gone over into a principle of legalism.
That is a false law.
But what we’re looking at in the Old Testament is the true concept of
Law. Disobedience is a principle that
carries through in phase two of the Christian life, beginning at the moment you
trust in Christ and terminating at the moment you die. But obedience has nothing to do with phase
one. That’s the distinguishing
quality. Obedience has nothing to do
with phase one! If you think that you
are saved and God pats your fleecy white head because of some good works that you
have done, then you are anti-Biblical.
Frequently Christians are sloppy in this area and they let this kind of
stuff go through and legalism can get involved.
This is not theoretical, it’s very practical because the moment this
begins to invade phase one, the moment you start connecting obedience with
being saved you destroy God’s grace and you have turned the whole plan of
salvation around so that God gives you something as a reward; you’re a nice
person so God rewards you. And when you get to heaven and you walk
through the pearly gates you’re going to say I earned my way through. This is the psychology that underlies
legalism, that God has to open the gate because of who I am.
Be careful when you talk to an unbeliever; never leave them with the
impression that they have to be good to be saved. Don’t give them that impression. If you do that it takes hours and hours of
counseling after you’ve done that to destroy everything you’ve said. It takes many more hours to straighten a
person out after they get the wrong idea than if you just didn’t say anything
and they came to you blank. It’d be far
easier to talk to them, but after they get this wrong idea it’s very difficult
to talk to them. This is why it’s so
difficult to witness to religious people, because they’ve got so much of this
self-righteousness, so much of this obedience business that you just break
through. The grace of God goes off them
like water off a duck’s back. It just
will not penetrate because they’ve built a shell around them of works, works,
works. Law is not legalism; the two are
different. Frequently when you see the word law in the New Testament Paul is
not talking about what I’m talking about, he’s talking about legalism, the misuse
of the Law.
Turn to Deut. 2:24 and we’ll get into that part of these first four
chapters that deal with grace. We’re going to see a marvelous principle, the
principle or doctrine of holy war. This
is a very, you might say emotional term, because people dislike war, etc. But I want to give ten principles of holy war
in the Old Testament so you will understand this concept of holy war and what
it means and why you read these vicious passages which we’re going to read
where the Jews go into a city and you picture this mentally, imagine armies
coming into your town from the south, another one coming in from the north, and
they go from house to house and pull you out of the house, line you up and take
a machine gun, bang, there you go, you, your family, everything. They don’t care whether you’re a woman,
whether you have children, how many children you have, they don’t care how
young your children are or anything else; they destroy everyone so that not one
person is left. All the children are
dead, all the parents are dead, all the wives are dead, all the husbands are
dead and all the grandparents are dead; everyone is dead.
This is what the Jews did and they did it in the will of God. It’s very hard to understand this and here’s
where liberalism throws up its hands and says the Old Testament is a book of
blood. How can a God of mercy possibly
allow this kind of thing to happen?
Unless you know the doctrine of holy war, you will have no answer to
this problem.
Let’s look at verse 24 and see the first principle of holy war. “Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over
the river Arnon,” to see this geographically, they started here and began to
move around
Now they begin moving northward but they don’t start holy war right
away, even though the march begins because
For one reason,
But notice between verse 19 and verse 24 something’s happened, something
drastic has happened and this gets into the will of God for the individual
life. The will of God for me and for you
has two different categories to it. We
have the universal will of God; this is the will of God for every believer, you
might say the morality, the various moral standards, but there’s a specific
will of God and that is up to you. I
can’t tell you the specific will of God for your life and you can’t tell me. The specific will of God is different; we
could pick out all the people in the congregation and say each one of you has a
different specific will… a different
specific will.
Now the specific will for
The holy war can be described in ten different points. The holy war is a concept which under girds
the whole Old Testament. The holy war
concept is going to be coming into prominence from verse 24 all the way on
through 4:1. What is holy war? By the way, these principles are good not
only for the Old Testament but the principles carry over into the Christian
life. In Eph. 6 we have the Christian
armor. You know why that exposition is
there? Because we live in a holy war
too, except it’s fought with different enemies.
But the principles are the same.
So the principle of holy war is vital to the Christian life. We don’t go out and use the same tactics they
used here.
The first thing to remember about holy war is that it served as a model
for all time. The holy war is an
expression of God’s holiness and as an expression of God’s holiness it lays out
the norms and standards by which we should live our lives. It inculcates a mental attitude toward the
Christian life. The Christian life is
not a rest in the sense that you sit around and contemplate infinity from now
until the rapture and wait for God to drop in. The Christian life is an active
life, it’s a dynamic life; it’s a moving life and it involves struggle and
fight. Therefore holy war in the Old
Testament serves as a model and this explains why it is included in the canon
of Scripture. Why go through all these
bloody battles that we’re going to go through?
People get their heads chopped off, men and women, it gets downright
gory. Why? Because God is teaching a principle. So the first thing to remember about holy war
is that it’s a model of the Christian life.
Secondly, there are two strategies in the holy. A holy war strategy is built in Deut. 20, so
let’s turn there and pick up the two strategies that were used in holy
war. When we get through this you’ll
understand as you read your newspaper and begin to see the Middle East starting
to blow up why the Jews and why the Arabs can just sit there and blast each
other to bits, because today these people do not view the Middle East situation
as a mere problem in foreign policy. To
both the Arabs and Islamic nations and to Israel, a Jewish nation, what you
have in the Middle East is not just a foreign policy problem. What you have in the Middle East is a holy
war.
For example, in the war when Mosha Dyan and his forces moved into the
Sinai Peninsula, you remember what happened.
Every battalion of soldiers as the Israeli tank columns lined up to make
the penetration, the rabbis went from tank column to tank column asking God’s
blessing on this because this was holy war.
And over in Egypt the Islamic priests of the mosques were doing the same
thing to the Arabs. This is why if we see an explosion in the Middle East
you’re going to see blood flow like you probably have never seen it blow, because
Jews and Arabs will fight to the end and one nation or the other nation is
going to be annihilated. That’s why this
Middle East problem is one of the most crucial problems that faces our country
today. Holy war is the motivation; it is
the mentality of these people. You will
not understand their determinism, the determination that these people have
unless you understand holy war.
Deut. 20:16, this is part of their strategy. They have two parts to their strategy, part
one and part two. Part one of their
strategy is, “But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth
give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breathes. That’s part one of the strategy and this is
for the Canaanites, or the Amorites. The
Amorites is another name used interchangeable in some cases, Amorites or
Canaanites. These are the cities
actually within the geographical bounds of the holy land and they are to be
utterly destroyed. That’s the first
strategy. Verse 17, “But thou shalt
utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites,
and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the LORD thy God hath
commanded thee. [18] That they teach you not to do after all their
abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should you sin against
the LORD your God.” There’s your first
strategy.
The second strategy in holy war is used beginning in verse 10. This is used against a city that is outside
the geographical boundaries of the land.
“When you come near unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace
unto it. [11] And it shall be, if it make thee an answer of peace, and open
unto thee, then it shall be that all the people who are found therein shall be
bond servants unto thee, and they shall serve thee.” In other words, they shall be submissive to
you. They come to these people and offer
them a peace offer, and the people have the opportunity of submitting to the
rule of Israel. Verse 12, “And if it
will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt
besiege it. [13] And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into your hands,
you will smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. [14] But the
women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even
all the spoil thereof, you will take unto thyself.”
Do you see the difference? Here
they don’t give them a chance. You say
that’s very unfair. Under part one of
the strategy they don’t give them a chance.
If they’re in the land there is no offer of peace, they move in there
and they are to destroy everything. But
part two of the strategy is that if they’re outside of the land they do get a
chance. We’ll see why in a bit.
The third point of the doctrine of holy war is that they are described in
Num. 21 as being recorded in a lost book of the Bible. There are actually no lost books in the canon
but there are many lost books that record interesting things that Bible
students would just love to get our hands on.
These would give a lot of tremendous background material for the Word of
God. Num. 21:14 tells you very clearly
that all of these holy wars were listed, described in a book known as The Book of the Wars of the LORD. This will give background for the passage
tonight. “Wherefore it is said in the
book of the wars of the LORD,” that should be all capitalized, that actually is
a title of a book, “The Book of the Wars
of the LORD,” and that was a source book from which historians later
borrowed. Josephus had some of these
borrowings in his book but by Josephus’ time this book had also been lost. In my research in the library I found some
legends which have been borrowed out of this book and I’ll show you some of
these and work them into the description of the conquest.
But the book itself has been lost so we really don’t know what happened
to this book. It’s one of those strange
things of history, it just dropped out and we’ve completely lost it. But notice what the book of the wars of
Yahweh lists, “What he did in the Red Sea, and in the brooks of Arnon.” This tells us something, that if we were to
look in this book, if we had this book before us tonight it would list all of
the wars of the Lord, the two greatest battles ever fought in history as far as
this book would be concerned would be the Red Sea and the Brook of Arnon. You the Red Sea, that’s where the waters
parted and Pharaoh got his final bath, or at least his soldiers did. He got baptized by immersion and it didn’t
save him. Pharaoh was destroyed at the
Red Sea but then we come to Arnon. At
Arnon something else is going to happen and whatever happens there is going to
be equal in magnitude to the Red Sea.
It’s not stressed in the text so you lose it unless you see this, but
there’s a tremendous thing that happened at Arnon and we’ll try to fill in what
happened.
The fourth thing to remember about holy war is that the war is not
Israel’s; the war is the Lord’s. The
battle is the Lord’s. You’ve heard this
promise given to Christians, “the battle is the Lord’s,” it is not our
battle. In other words, our enemies are
out there, not because of us; often they are because we’re kind of foolish and
we engender personal animosity and people don’t like us and that’s something
else. But spiritually speaking our
enemies, the object of our attack is out there not because of you, not because
of me, but because of who we stand for.
So this battle is the battle of the Lord’s, this is the Lord’s battle.
This has tremendous repercussion because it means that God is leading
the nation. Turn to Deut. 1:30 a verse
we went over before but it shows you the concept of God’s war. This immediately changes perspective. Up to this time you’ve wondered, how can you
get up in the pulpit and say all these things about it’s the will of God that
these armies come along and bash babies heads against the wall and kill all the
people in a family, etc. just massacre people without even giving them a
chance; how can you say that’s in the will of God? Because this is not just a struggle between
two nations, this is a spiritual judgment in history. “The LORD your God, who is going,” that’s a
participle in the Hebrew, “who is constantly walking before you, He will fight
for you.”
Do you remember in Joshua 5, where Joshua is getting ready to go assault
Jericho and he’s taking a night stroll outside the camp and all of a sudden he
sees this tremendous angel of the Lord in front of him and he says whose side
are you on? What it was was Jesus Christ
in preincarnate form, that’s the angel of the Lord, and what is He called? He’s called the captain of the Lord’s
host. This means that that was Jesus
Christ leading the army. This is a
picture of Christ that you don’t get if you don’t look at the Old
Testament. Jesus Christ is a militant
conqueror, not just that nice little sweet person that you see in Sunday school
literature holding a sheep in his hands, and a few kids, etc. That’s one side of His character but never
forget the other side of His character.
He is a conqueror. For a picture
of this turn to Rev. 19 and you’ll where at the end of history Jesus Christ
breaks in and conducts another holy war, the holy war that culminates at the
end of the Tribulation. This is why we
have such a thing known in theology as the pre-tribulational rapture because
the Church is never used as an instrument of holy war in the sense we’re
speaking of. The Church’s holy war is
against principalities and powers, but when holy war is resumed again in
history it is resumed in the Tribulation and cannot therefore be related to the
Church because the Church is never related to holy war in the flesh sense of
the term. The Tribulation begins the
renewed Old Testament holy war concept.
This is the whole story of the Tribulation and that’s why you have to
have a pre-tribulational rapture. The
Church has to be removed from the scene before the holy war can resume.
When the Church is removed from the scene, then holy war resumes and the
culmination of holy war is given in Rev. 19:11, one of the most dynamic
pictures in the Bible of Jesus Christ.
If I were an artist I would study this passage and study and study until
I thought I could paint this. This would
make a tremendous painting. “And I saw
heaven opened and, behold, a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called
Faithful and True, and in righteousness He does judge and make war. [12] His
eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a
name written, that no man knew, but He Himself. [13] And He was clothed with a
vesture dipped in blood;” which is an ancient way of saying He was a commander
in chief who had engaged in battle, He had blood on His sword, He had blood on
His uniform. He was a man who has fought
a battle, and He is one therefore whose “vesture is dipped in blood,” that
means He has been involved in combat, “and his name is called The Word of God.
[14] And the armies that were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed
in fine linen, white and clean.”
Verse 15, “And out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should
smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the
winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. [16] And He has on His
vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF
LORDS.” There is a true picture of Jesus
Christ. That is a picture of Jesus
Christ leading holy war and notice, He is leading it. Angels are involved in this process that’s
described here, but it’s Christ’s battle.
It is the battle of the Lord. So
holy war is not a war that is waged by Israel, it is a war that is waged by
God.
The fifth thing to remember about holy war is that the form in which God
went out was the ark. In other words,
God went out in the form of the ark and we’ll see this if we turn to Num. 10:35
and you will see the way in which God marched at the head of the armies. You have just seen how Christ will be shown
in the Tribulation. What was the form in which God moved out with the armies in
the Old Testament? “And it came to
pass, when the ark set forward,” here it is, here’s the connection, here’s the
ark. We don’t know exactly what it
looked like, it was kind of a coffin like box, inside it had various things
which had tremendous significance to Israel, it was carried through some rods
staid on the side, and up here they had two cherubim.
What these cherubim looked like is a matter of speculation, some think
on the basis of modern findings that the cherubim actually are like the sphinx
of Egypt and that the sphinx actually is an ancient, ancient replica of a
cherub. Why this was introduced in early
old kingdom Egyptology is a question which scholars have not been able to
understand. The sphinx is a remarkable statue and who made it no one can know
for sure. But anyway the cherubim were
up here representing the holiness of God and God was pictured in the
imagination of the people as His throne, right here, as though in dotted lines
I would draw a throne here and seated on that throne was God Himself.
Therefore when these men marched out with this ark God was sitting on
that throne and this is why it was such a dynamic picture and why when the
armies of Israel moved forward these people were absolutely confident, God was
sitting on that ark. And in verse 35 is
the command, “Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered,” you see,
“Rise up, LORD, and let Your enemies be scattered, and let them that hate thee
flee before thee.” This is a command to
start holy war, “Rise up. You see why
we’re doing this, because our first verse tonight is “Rise up.” “…and let them that hate thee flee before
thee. [36] And when it rested, he said, Return, O LORD, unto the many thousands
of Israel.” And when the battle had
been done, when the annihilation was finished, the word “return.” These are the two commands for holy war:
start, “rise up,” when you’re finished, “return.” These are the two commands that begin and end
holy war.
Principle number six of holy war; holy war was always against peoples
who rejected Jesus Christ. This is why you
can tolerate absolute annihilation. Go
back to the strategy concept; those cities that were in the land had negative
volition toward God and they had hardened their heart. Remember God said to Abraham you people are
going to stay down there in Egypt for centuries. Why?
Because I want the Amorites to reject, to reject, to reject, to reject,
to reject, to reject until they harden their hearts, until their iniquity is
full. So by the time we come to the
invasion of the holy land, these people have rejected totally and completely
whatever knowledge they had of Jesus Christ in that day. Therefore they merit total judgment. This is why in the book of Revelation you see
Christ coming on a white horse, and it looks strange to you why He judges these
people that are on the earth. The reason
He judges the people in the Tribulation is that as a society the world in the
Tribulation will utterly and totally reject Jesus Christ. We may think we live in the Tribulation today
but we haven’t seen anything like it’s going to be like when we get in the
Tribulation.
The second thing to remember, the policy of those outside of the land
was the offer. They’d march up to a city
and they’d say peace or not. What was
the offer? The offer was will you submit
to us. What does submission to Israel mean?
It means they will submit to the God of Israel. Each nation at that time had their own
god. Suppose you were the mayor of some
city over there east of Jordan. And all
of a sudden you get reports, hey look, do you see that column of soldiers
coming up to the city wall, and all of a sudden at the head of the column there
would be a soldier from Israel and he’d say okay, we’re offering you a choice,
you as mayor of this city can do one of two things; you can accept my authority
and I will come in here and take over your city, or you can reject and we’ll
have a fight.
What is the issue? The issue is
that if you’re the mayor and out here you have the captain that was in charge
of a column of troops, if you subject your city to this captain it means that
you are acknowledging the captain’s God or Yahweh, or Jehovah; however you wish
to spell it. But if you stay and you say
no, you say no we are not going to submit to you, you are saying you are going
to worship your god. In the eastern
areas of Jordan they worshiped a god called Chemosh, so many of the Moabites
later on in history would say no, we worship Chemosh and we are not going to
submit to Yahweh, we’re not going to submit to your Lord. So you want to understand that this offer is
not in a naturalistic humanistic level. The offer involves a commit
spiritually.
So these people under the second concept of strategy of holy war were
actually accepting or rejecting Christ in our terminology today. And they had the choice, do you want to
submit or not. If not, you’re going to
be in trouble. And this is the authority
and basis on which God could judge these cities.
The seventh principle of holy war, Deut. 2:31, “And the LORD said unto
me, Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land before thee; begin to
possess it, that you may inherit his land.”
This goes back to an element of Hebrew grammar which underscores the
principle of faith. And that is nathan from which we get the word Nathan
is the Hebrew word to give, and it is in the perfect tense. The perfect tense means it is totally
completed action. So what God is saying
is that when you go into this city, I have, past tense, already given it to
you. Therefore the seventh principle of
holy war is that it is based on a total provision of God. God has already before the war starts won the
war. Do you see how this carries over in
the Christian life? The battle that we
face as believers has already been won by Jesus Christ. All we are doing is a mopping up operation,
and it’s the same thing here; perfect tense means that it is finished, I have
already given it. So the seventh
principle, the armies were given provision of perfect confidence, of perfect
provision.
The eighth principle and this is something that also carries into the
Christian life. Any soldier who could
not go out with those armies in faith and trust in God’s provision was
dismissed there on the spot. In Deut.
20:8 we’ll see the process. The most
famous illustration of this is Gideon but Deut. 20:8, no soldier that had any
competing interest would be around to do this.
This illustrates the faith principle; the war must be waged in
faith. “And the officers shall speak
further to the people and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and
fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart
faint as well as his heart.”
If you have a group of people on a team and one person on that team has
a bad attitude, some sour grapes attitude, it’s just like a rotten apple, it
will go through the whole group. The
best thing for you to do if you’re ever in charge of a group like this is to
get rid of the troublemakers at the start. Get rid of them because they’ll just
mess up the whole group and it’s far better to start out with two people if you
have to that are on the right track than start out with ten and you’ve got one
or two troublemakers, whiners and when they get involved in something they
start getting on the telephone and saying I don’t like this and I don’t like
that, etc. and the first thing you know you’ve got ten people behind the
8-ball.
Do you see the principle here: dedication, and only those who would go
along with the system. If you back up a
few verses you notice some other things too.
Verse 5, “And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man
is there who hath built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and
return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate
it.” No competing interest. It’s a legitimate concern here for this man,
it’s a concern of his mind and if his mind is going to be preoccupied with
this, forget it, just forget it. Take
care of it, get it done with and then come back and join the crowd. But if you’ve got this on your mind, don’t bother.
Verse 6, “And what man is he who has planted a vineyard, and hath not
yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the
battle, and another man eat it.” Same
principle. Verse 7, “What man is there
who hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him to and return unto
his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.” The point is that all these are competing
interests.
In the synoptic gospel remember how Christ uses the very illustrations;
see all of these lay background for the synoptic gospels and this is why Jesus
Christ would come up to the person, and remember when He turned around and said
let the dead bury their dead, come with Me and follow Me. Jesus Christ was borrowing a principle from
the doctrine of holy war and He was saying that if you’re to follow Me, this is
discipleship, not salvation. If you are
to follow Me as a disciple, then let go of the competing interest. You’re going to either have them or you’re
going to have Me, one or the other.
Whoever loves his father and his mother more than Me, forget it. Your priority is to God first, everything
else second. The principle iterated in
the Gospels by Christ is built solidly on this principle of holy war.
So this is one of the exciting things as we come to know the Old
Testament and it really straightens out a lot of our interpretation of the New
Testament. You know immediately
therefore that Christ was never teaching salvation. When Christ said “follow Me” in the Gospels,
when He said if you give all these things up and follow Me, He wasn’t teaching
salvation; He was teaching discipleship, something else, that comes after
salvation. It’s very clear from the
doctrine of holy war. All of these
people are saved. The point is that
there are some who are disqualified from service, from discipleship and they
have to go home and get whatever needs to be straightened out straightened out
and then come back and join the crowd.
That’s what Christ is talking about in the Gospel when He says follow
Me. Now when he says to Peter, when he
walks along the Sea of Galilee and He says hey, follow me, I’ll make you
fishers of men, some people think that’s salvation. That’s not an offer of salvation, that’s an
offer of discipleship. Evidently Peter
had met the Lord years before that.
That’s just a final offer of fellowship, come follow Me, now I will give
you service, now I will make you fishers of men. That’s service, that’s more than salvation.
Therefore principle eight, holy war is waged on a faith principle, we
might put in parenthesis after that (a mature faith), a faith that can
concentrate, a faith that can sit down and analyze a problem and keep its eyes
focused on Jesus Christ.
The last two points are rather interesting in the holy war concept. Principle nine deals with tactics and
weapons. What weapons were used in holy
war? One weapon is illustrated in Joshua
6 at Jericho and that is earth tremors, or you might say earthquakes. Another principle used in holy war was
Joshua’s long day, Joshua 10, when the sun was held still. You ask me do I believe the sun actually
stayed still; I believe the earth was disturbed in its rotation and I believe I
can prove it. I believe I can show you
from the western hemisphere that at the precise time they were having a long
day in the eastern hemisphere, in the western hemisphere the Aztec mythology
reports a long night. Therefore the
earth evidently was disturbed very seriously at this point in time and the sun
actually literally stood still. Of
course this was a source of tremendous amazement to these people, that this
army was coming….
You can imagine what’s going to happen, if you remember Dunkirk and
D-day, both those situations where armies were crossing the English Channel
depended on a miracle, and at the precise moment on D-day the weather broke,
just at the right time. Just at the
right time the cloud layer broke and it was tremendous. I recognize that from a meteorologist standpoint,
I can just see those weathermen sitting around biting their nails, is this
going to happen or not, and here’s General Eisenhower and his staff, leaning
down your neck and you’re supposed to come up with a weather forecast. Those
people did and I think they could make a believer out of all the meteorologists
at that time that their forecast verified at least enough so the airplanes were
able to make that landing.
Dunkirk was another example, when the British expeditionary forces were
trapped on the northern coast of France and all of England’s citizens had to
come over here, and they took rowboats and everything else to get their boys
back home. And they came up to Dunkirk
and took men in off in all sorts of boats, fishing boats, pleasure yacht, they
used everything to get that British army back to England, and some of the
tattered French army. These are examples
in nature where at the precise moment the nature itself, the creation itself
move in perfect sympathy with what’s going on.
So holy war was a perfect example of this.
The tactical weapons that were used in holy war were not just human
means. They were tactics of the whole spectrum of nature. We read a Psalm later on in Judges 5 where
this lady, Deborah sings out, and she says the Lord has fought with the stars
and with the sun against Sisera, and she’s saying that the weapons that God
used, the tactics that He employed were the whole spectrum of creation. This is why it was invincible. When that holy war was being waged these
armies would just sit back and wonder.
And this is why it’s so prophetic and can act as a tremendous example of
Christian faith because the weapons were not being used by the believers, the
weapons were being used by God, and He used all sorts of things in creation.
When His armies walked up to Jericho, they didn’t put dynamite under the
walls, it wasn’t any humanly engineered weapon, God did it. And you can imagine their amazement as they
sat there and watched this thing just fall apart, big, thick walls. They sent a spy mission in and they went to
Rahab and her house of prostitution and came back and said look, do you see how
thick those walls are? Do you know how
thick those walls are? How are we ever
going to get those walls? How are we
going to get Jericho? We’re going to
walk up to those walls and they’ll drop rocks on our head, we can’t possibly
get into Jericho. But when they moved up
to Jericho all of a sudden the Lord used a weapon that they hadn’t even thought
of. The Lord used a fantastic weapon, an
earthquake and that city just crumbled before their eyes.
That is the kind of aid, in a spiritual sense, that is available to
believers today. The weapons that are
used in spiritual conflict don’t come from you; they come directly from the
Lord. For example, in the Old Testament
when Joshua gets in a bind and he has these people trapped in this valley and
he needs a couple more hours of sunlight because if the night comes in he
doesn’t have any infrared device to detect soldiers, he’s got to have sunlight
so his armies can finish them off, they’ve got them trapped and he needs light
because if the sun goes down then those men can escape in the hills and once
they’ve escaped that’s it, they can reform up in the hills and harass the
Israeli lines from now all the way through Joshua’s campaign. So he’s got to trap these people, he’s got to
defeat them. He could sit there and say
oh, it’s horrible, I have only got an hour left, hurry up boys, we haven’t got
enough men, etc. but what happened? All of
a sudden the sun didn’t set, the sun sat there.
You can imagine some amazement and you can imagine some of the enemies
saying hey, what happened, if we could just hold off these Jews for about 45
minutes we’ll have darkness and then we can move into the hills, and they sit
there and try this waiting game and it doesn’t work because the sun stopped.
You see, God always has the perfect weapon to use, the perfect
weapon! And in holy war you have a total
use; you might say it’s a full spectrum of weapons that are used. If our country keeps on the way it is we’ll
need all these weapons because our man-made weapons have been slightly altered
through various policies, and the ones we have are falling apart. There may come a day when believers are going
to have to hit their knees and ask God, God, if we’re to survive as a nation
you’re going to have to interact in the natural realm. It doesn’t require any expert on military
affairs to realize that previous administrations have stripped our armies in
Europe of their weapons to give them to Vietnam; they’ve taken guns away, taken
planes away, taken spare parts away, and these men are in Europe. Through a policy of political dishonesty
we’ve stripped the men in Europe.
There is only one way you can respond and that is to get down on your
knees and ask God to intervene. This is
not some abstruse thing that’s way off in 1400 BC, this is something that comes
right down to the present day and we can appreciate the need for these tactical
weapons under the ninth principle of the doctrine of holy war because they
didn’t have weapons either. These people
didn’t have weapons and they used nature’s weapons, they used God’s weapons in
creation.
Can you think of another time in Scripture where this happens? The Tribulation. In the Tribulation God uses all sorts of
things, He uses plagues, He uses earthquakes, He uses stars falling from heaven
which are a meteoric bombardment to the planet earth. He uses all sorts of things in nature to
crumble the society. This is holy
war. Holy war’s ninth characteristic is
that it is waged in total cooperation with the elements of creation. In other words, wherever these armies move
there’s cooperation. For example, if
these armies are moving into an area you can think of an infantry operation,
they’re moving down to some area and all of a sudden the infantry is in there
and then comes sudden rain and they’re all bogged down in mud. Elements God uses to help, and this is holy
war and it’s one of its characteristics.
The last principle, an important principle for the passage is the last
step in holy war was the cherem
principle, cherem principle, and the cherem principle comes from the Hebrew
word to dedicate. It means that after
the battle all the spoils of that war were dedicated to the Lord, they were
dedicated to Yahweh by the cherem
principle, they were devoted to Yahweh.
What does that mean? That means
that they were not Israel’s and since they were not Israel’s this is a
principle that means you destroy the women, you destroy the babies, you destroy
the cattle, you destroy the farms, you destroy everything because the cherem principle means that the booty,
the plunder of war is not Israel’s; it is to go to the Lord and it goes to the
Lord by means of sacrifice; sacrifice means destruction, death and
burning. All of the plunder, all the
remains, all the people, all the babies, all the children and everybody would
be dedicated to the Lord.
You say isn’t that an odd dedication.
It’s the only baby dedication in the Old Testament. But they dedicated everything to the Lord and
burned it and destroyed it because if they kept it, then it would go to them,
not to the Lord. And actually the
destruction is a prevention device so that when the people would go into a
city, for example, it would stop ravishing, it would stop the wholesale
brutality, you say this is more brutal but actually when Israel moved into a
city they would know that we can’t take a cent out of this city, we can’t take
one of those men for slaves, we can’t take one of those women for our wives, we
can’t take anything out of the city, it’s all Gods. So when they went into the city they went in
with the attitude that everything in that city, they couldn’t even take a dime
out of the city. It would all be burned
and destroyed to God. And the
destruction, the termination of holy war in step ten is to show that this
plunder goes to God and not the nation; it will prevent them from taking it.
Let’s finish up Deut. 2; we can understand it very rapidly because of
the principles of holy war. Verse 24,
based on these principles you automatically know what this is, “Rise up, take
your journey,” this is the command to begin, “pass over the Arnon; behold, I
have given into thine hand Sihon, the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land,”
there’s the principle of confidence, “Begin to possess it, and contend with him
in battle.”
Verse 25, “This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear
of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven,” why is that? Because God is going to use astronomical means
to help them out in this battle, and it’s going to be visible to all nations of
the whole earth. Verse 26, “And I sent
messengers out of the wilderness of Kedemoth unto Sihon,” and you might say we
have a mixture here, here he sends under principle two, strategy number one,
strategy number two says that if the city is outside the geographical
boundaries go and offer an offer of peace.
That’s what they’re doing here, but later on we’re going to see they
destroy everything under principle number one, and the difference is that
principle number two was used because of the location. This city was outside the original boundaries
of the land, but the people were Canaanites who had come from inside the
land. So what we have is a mixture,
these people have moved outside and if we had time we could go through how
these people destroyed the Moabites, etc.
But they moved into this land illegitimately and here’s grace; here’s
grace because they’re going to get extra real estate; this is an extra deal for
them, because when they destroy Sihon they’re going to get land that they never
would have gotten had they gone into the land 40 years before because at that
time this land was outside the boundary.
But now they’re going to get some extra land; this is grace.
Verse 27-28 is the offer, self-explanatory, this is an offer of peace,
he’s not offering to even bother them.
In fact here in this offer it’s not even the offer of holy war, he’s not
even asking Sihon to submit to them. But
as you will see in verse 30, “But Sihon, king of Heshbon, would not let us pass
by him; for the LORD thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart
obstinate,” basically all that means is that if a person has negative volition,
God’s grace puts restraints on negative volition. However, when God decides okay, this person
has had enough, he’s going to play My game My way, he’s had a chance and he’s
rejected, then okay, then God takes the restraints off and God lets negative
volition go. If this person wants to
choose against Me, fine, I’ll just give you clear reign, you can do what you
want to. So God in His grace just takes
the wraps off negative volition and this man’s whole negative volition
expresses itself just like Pharaoh.
Notice he winds up in the same boat, or lack of a boat. “…that he might deliver him into thy hand,
as appears this day. [31] And the LORD said to me, Behold, I have begun to give
Sihon and his land,” there’s the principle of confidence.
Verse 32, “Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people….” Verse 33, “And the LORD our God delivered him
before us,” and in verse 34 “And we took all his cities at that time, and
utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones of every city,”
and the word “utterly destroyed” is cherem,
this means that he dedicated, it doesn’t mean destroy, the root of this word
means to dedicate, and he dedicated the men and the women and the little ones
of every city. That’s a horrible
slaughter until you realize this is God’s war and these people have rejected.
Verse 30 says God hardened his spirit, and that shows that this
rejection wasn’t just a human decision.
When Sihon rejected he was rejecting Jesus Christ and we know this
because of the language. He hardened his
spirit; his human spirit which is a part of your soul that interacts with
spiritual phenomenon wouldn’t be involved if it was just a human decision. This was a spiritual decision, so therefore
it says He hardened his spirit. It was a spiritual decision that Sihon
made. And this led to verse 34, a
horrible massacre.
In verse 35 there’s an adaptation of the cherem principle, the cattle they did take, because as I said the
location was outside of the land. By the
way, one of the tremendous myths that’s grown up around this story and I just
give this to you, it is some of the stories of The Book of the Wars of the LORD and probably why this book was
never accepted in the canon, but it says the valley Arnon looked like this, if
you look from east to west, on the one side of the valley they had these great
rock projectiles outside of this rock cliff and on the other side of the
valley, on the south side of the valley they had caves. The story goes that Sihon’s attempt was going
to ambush; he knew the Israeli columns would come up through this valley and so
what he did, he assigned all his troops to these caves. He said look, when you see those troops come
down, just roll a few rocks. He had it
all locked up. So what happened? God supernaturally… now this legend but I’m
giving this to you because it shows you that something natural did happen, I’m
not saying it happened exactly this way.
But God so supernaturally moved that this valley closed right up and
they were just about ready, the Israeli’s were just about ready to move down
into that valley and God says hold it, I’m going to use one of My weapons so
that valley just closed up and these two things came together and these
projectiles went into the caves and those people were trapped in the caves and never
came out and that’s the end of Sihon.
That shows you that something happened.
Obviously we can’t say that that’s exactly what happened, it’s not part
of inspired Scripture, but it evidently points to some supernatural workings
within creation that happened at that time.
Briefly, the second city or the second group of cities that were
destroyed is another man by the name of Og.
Og is a person who was a king just north of Sihon. Og is a very large person and verse 2, “And
the LORD said unto me, Fear him not; for I will deliver him, and all his
people, and his land, into thy hand, and thou shalt do unto him as thou did
unto Sihon, king of the Amorites, who dwelt at Heshbon.” I want to correct one point in the
translation. If you have the King James
you’ll read in verse 2, “Fear him not; for I will deliver him,” that “will
deliver” is Hebrew perfect tense and should be translated “I have delivered
him.” That is the perfect tense in the
Hebrew and there’s a principle that fits with the doctrine of holy war.
Verse 5 gives you some of the cities, “All these cities were fortified
with high walls, gates, and bars, beside unwalled towns, a great many.” Verse
6, “And we utterly destroyed them,” cherem
“we dedicated them as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly
destroying the men, women, and children of every city.”
Verse 11, “For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of
giants,” those are the Rephaim that we discussed last time, “behold, his
bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the children of Ammon?
Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after
the cubit of a man.” To get the
conversion, this conversion is multiplied by one and a half and you’ll get
it. So you have about thirteen and a
half feet and six feet, and that’s his bed.
You like king size beds, there you are, a perfect one, made of iron, 13
x 6. I think most people would have
plenty of room. 13 x 6, that was the
man’s bed.
Now I want to show you a little notice here. The bed was kept “in Rabbah of the children
of Ammon” and that is one of the proofs that Scripture is historically true and
why liberals who say this is a fabrication cannot explain that little notice in
verse 11. The bed is still around; when
this book was written that bed was there.
And the author, Moses, when he wrote this wanted to make sure, look, do
you believe that I’m actually trusted, can you really trust me to tell you true
history. If you don’t believe it, take a
trip over there and you can see the bed for yourself.
By the way, if you’re on the college campus and ever get challenged
about Jesus Christ you can do the same thing, because the early Christians said
to the people who said Jesus Christ never rose from the dead, do you know what
the Christian reply was? There were 500
people that saw Him, go ask them. You
see there was always evidence, God never does anything in the dark; there is
always sufficient historical evidence that the Bible is trustworthy.
Og was a very interesting person, we don’t know too much about him but
we do say this. One of the legends in The Book of the Wars of the LORD, one
of the sources that comes down to us through various extra-Biblical sources
says that a very interesting thing happened.
Moses and his armies came up to Og one night and they caught him, he was
inside this walled city and they did a reconnaissance and they found out about
how many men he had in the city, etc. and they came back to report to Moses and
the troops got back to Moses and said this is what’s happening, he’s got so
many troops on this wall, so many troops on this wall, and Moses said fine,
tomorrow we move.
Well Moses got up in the morning and there was a little fog in the
morning, it was kind of hazy and Moses couldn’t see too well. He walked outside the camp, just a little
morning quiet time or something, and he walked outside the camp and he looked
over at the city, and he looked at the city and he couldn’t believe his eyes
because on the top of the wall was a big tower.
And he said wait a minute, the boys went out last night and said there
was no tower there on that wall; what’d they do, built a tower overnight. These men must have been busy; they must have
had their army engineers working all night to build this tower. Then as Moses drew closer to this tower it
turned out to be Og, Og was sitting on the city wall and he was that large.
This is one of the great stories in that come out of this which shows
again, you don’t have to believe all the details of these legends, they’re not
scriptural, but they do give evidence that something amazing happened at this
time. This is the second token of God’s
grace that we’ve seen tonight. Next time
we will move into chapter 4 where we will get the application, the final truths
of the historical prologue before we begin the Law.