Lesson 59

True Patriotism – 26:1-19

 

…the perfect requirements of the Mosaic Law but we will begin with those areas and those considerations that have to do with implementing the Law in history.  We will deal, for example, with the angelic council before the Lord; that was set up by Moses in Deut. 32 and begin to discover here the basis on which the nations were created.  But the whole emphasis of the Word shifts at this point when we leave this chapter, so tonight we will finish with the Law section.  This Law section extends from chapter 5 through chapter 26.  Basically we could summarize the whole set of the hundreds of verses in here as simply this: they define what love of God is.  In other words, love in the Word of God is not some sentimental emotion; it is carefully circumscribed and described by sentence after sentence after sentence of instruction in the Word. 

 

In chapter 26 we come to the last of the four sections.  In chapter 12-26 we’ve dealt with that section of the Law that has to do with loving the Lord with all your soul, that is, amidst the details of life.  And in this section we dealt with many things and we come now to chapter 26 where we deal with the national spirit, or patriotism in Israel, the national spirit that was due to God’s pattern for the citizen’s allegiance.  In other words, here we have in this chapter how patriotism was expressed in the nation Israel; because the nation’s God was the Lord, the patriotism basically is a form of worship.  We do not worship when we are patriotic; if we do it’s blasphemy, confusing God with Caesar.  There’s a difference.  But patriotism in Israel could be fully blown patriotism in the full sense of the word because the head of the nation was God Himself, and that is why no nation on earth can have this kind of patriotism.  But there are parallels. 

 

Nevertheless, although we don’t share this kind of patriotism today or have the right to, there are distinct parallels and these parallels are widely neglected.  And every time you begin to say some of these parallels you’re accused of being a flag-waver by some of the iconoclast of our society.  And that’s wrong, and you shouldn’t be ashamed to wave the flag a little bit; one of the greatest flags that has ever flown in the world and I do not apologize for waving it.  So we have to distinguish, although our patriotism is not a worshipful patriotism as was Israel’s, nevertheless, there are parallels that are clear and distinct and we’ll see these as we move through this chapter.

 

In Deut. 26:1 the text says “And it shall be, when thou hast come,” that’s past tense, “when you have come in unto the land which the LORD thy God gives thee for an inheritance,” when they had come in and taken control of this territory, then this Law is to be phased in.  In other words, this Law gives commandments that couldn’t possibly be obeyed out in the wilderness.  They are out in the wilderness; geographically the position of Israel is that they are just east of the Jordan Valley.  The nation Israel, a million strong, has come up along the east side of this land; they tried a southern penetration and were repulsed because of their lack of faith.  So now after 40 years of vacation in the desert they decide to come back in on the east side. Their discipline is over, the reason their discipline is over after 40 years is because it took 30 years for the generation that sinned to die.  God sentenced every man that was the head of that generation that was 20 years or older, every man 20 years or older in that generation was sentenced to die in the wilderness, because he, as a representative male, with the exception of two, Caleb and Joshua, incidentally Moses was included, they all were sentenced to die outside of the Promised Land.  This is called the sin unto death; it is repeated in the New Testament in 1 John 5, the sin unto death.  It is a sin that you commit and you negate your conscience, you destroy the ability of your conscience to control your life with the result that your human spirit begins to be subject to satanic attack. Because you are a regenerate person God says, according to 1 Cor. 5:5 that He will not allow your human spirit to be destroyed by Satan and therefore He calls you home. So the sin unto death is basically a merciful provision that God has of removing from the scene believers who through negative volition have allowed their souls to become open to satanic assault. So God always cleans house and gets rid of these kind of believers and He had to for a whole generation until He could take the women and the children and their sons, and that represents the nation now that’s coming in from the east.

 

Moses can’t go across the Jordan Valley, he is going to die here, it’s going to be one of the most unusual funerals that actually has ever been, probably the most unusual funeral was that of the Lord Jesus Christ, but Moses’ funeral was fantastic because Moses lived in perfect health up until the second he dropped dead.  He didn’t have any health problems or anything; he just walked up to the mountain and dropped dead.  He gave up his spirit, that’s the last chapter of Deuteronomy, a fantastic way this man died, he didn’t die in misery, he died wanting to know what his nation would do, but then he just gave up the ghost and dropped dead, that was it, God took him home.  So we have an interesting case, even in Moses life, of death. 

 

But what they are to do when they come into the land, after they cross the Jordan Valley, conduct a three column campaign.  Joshua is going to penetrate westward very rapidly.  By the way, these tactics are still studied by the generals in the Israeli army because these tactics are considered to be so wise, geared to the terrain in which they’re fighting, that they can’t really be improved upon.  And you know why they’re the ultimate in tactics?  Because it was God that gave them to Joshua.  So what He did was to divide Joshua’s military operation into three phases.  The first one was to make a rapid lightening penetration westward; this severed the nation from the north and the south, which incidentally is why Israel today is so concerned about Jordan.

 

The Jordanian army is the best equipped in the Middle East apart from Israel itself.  The Jordanian army is not like the rest of the Arab nations.  The rest of the Arab nations would do well if they could get a sling shot to operate, but the Jordanian army is a very well-trained army because the British, for years and years and years trained the Jordanians; the great infantry officers trained the Jordanian officers and the Jordanian army is tremendous, except, of course since the Six Day War that Jordanian army was badly mauled and Israel deliberately tried to inflict tremendous casualties in the Jordanian army to remover their officer corps because Israel realized that if its officer corps, that’s the head of the Jordanian army, was to live she’s got a threat, because Jordan today is in a position that she can do what Joshua did and they are very sensitive.  Israel is very sensitive to a lightning penetration from the east, just like Joshua made back in the Biblical times. 

 

Therefore, this is why, in the Six Day War they moved across here and got a buffer zone on the east side of the Jordanian Valley and they intend to hold on to that buffer zone.  The reason is that gives them cushion, it gives them a chance to cut out infiltrators across this zone, it also gives them a chance to gear up their defense forces if an invasion comes from the east, so it’s a very crucial piece of real estate and I doubt you will ever see the nation Israel in our generation, by diplomacy any way, give up this land.  It’s very important.

 

Joshua came across here, made a penetration, divided the nation, the Canaanites, in half. After he had destroyed their backbone, then he went south in the second phase of his campaign and went down into Hebron, etc. into the lower cities.  Now it was during this lightening campaign that he cleaned up the whole area just to the south, almost down to Kadesh-barnea.  When he finished with this then rapidly he moved up into phase three of the campaign and burned and destroyed his way up north of the Sea of Galilee.  He went all the way up here, a tremendous campaign, lightening fast, an example of tremendous military genius. 

 

So Joshua had this campaign and when it was over they would have at least a strong toehold in the nation.  Now in verse 1 God says when this campaign has finished, and you’ve settled down in the land, then I want you to do something.  Then I want you, verse 2, “That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the LORD thy God gives thee, and shalt put it in a basket,” now obviously this is not all the first fruits. What this is is a portion, a symbolic portion, that the people were to take.  They moved over here and began to produce in this land. And so they are to take this, take the baskets, every season and present it before the Lord.  Now why?  There are various reasons for this; it would parallel something in your life. 

 

If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the New Testament tells you that you possess the firstfruits of God’s plan for the Church.  Israel would possess the firstfruits of the produce of her land.  What are the firstfruits that you possess as a believer?  Basically there are least two places in the New Testament where these firstfruits are listed.  One of them is in Romans 8 where the Holy Spirit is said to be the firstfruit and so because the Holy Spirit indwells you, He is the firstfruit of what?  He is the firstfruit of the life that you are going to live for all eternity, and God has at this point in history invested your life with His Holy Spirit.  He indwells, at the point of salvation the Holy Spirit comes to indwell; He indwells every believer because Romans 8:9 says the person without the Spirit of God is none of His, therefore there’s no such thing as a saved person who does not have the indwelling Holy Spirit.  And this indwelling is a firstfruits; it is the earnest, the down-payment of what God is going to do.

 

The second thing that is said to be the firstfruits in the New Testament is in 1 Cor. 15 where the resurrected Christ is to be the firstfruits.  Why?  Because the Lord Jesus Christ, in His body, when you look at the body of the risen Lord Jesus Christ that body is going to be like your body in the resurrection.  It’s not that He’s got a better body than you because He’s God; His body is part of His humanity and therefore in His humanity He resembles what you will be like and you will have a resurrection body; no more Medicare or anything else because you won’t need it.  His body is built by God for eternity and it’s going to last for eternity, no breakdowns, no doctors in heaven. And so you have a resurrection body of perfect health.  And it will also have other interesting features like standing out in front of cars and you can let the car go right through you, really shake up some of the drivers wouldn’t it.  You can do that if you have a resurrection body but don’t try it now but if you have a resurrection body this is possible.

 

Now the firstfruits that Israel had were physical; they were the crops that were grown and produced in the land that God had given them.  Now since firstfruits are mentioned here I think we should review Israel’s national calendar.  That we might understand firstfruits in verse 2, let’s look at Israel’s calendar for Israel’s calendar was one of the most fantastic calendars of history.  In her calendar, her national calendar, she actually had, throughout the year she had these events in the calendar; basically three feast.  She had the Feast of Unleavened Bread; the second feast was the Feast of Pentecost, and the third feast was the Feast of Tabernacles.  Three great feasts in this calendar.  If you study the calendar from the beginning of the year to the end of the year in Israel’s system of counting, you have summarized her whole history.  It’s amazing, the calendar from one end to the other depicts world history, and so every one of the events of the calendar actually causes the people to have to recall an event of real history.

 

For example, the Feast of Unleavened Bread went for seven days, from the 14th to the 21st of Nissan which is approximately March-April in our records.  They had a lunar calendar so it was somewhat different from our solar based calendar.  So we have the 14th through the 21st; this is a week in which all the people had to eat unleavened bread.  The beginning of the week was Passover; it was here where they took a lamb and they killed this lamb and the blood was drained off and then they burned parts of it and ate it, etc. and the Passover was a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross so you immediately have out of this first complex, in the springtime the first complex of feasts surrounding this Unleavened Bread thing depicts the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  So you have this parallel, you have a basis and we’re going to see each one of these has a basis and it has a fulfillment. 

 

I want you to see this because this is going to tell you how to interpret Bible prophecy.  People wonder how do you interpret the Bible, how do you know what’s going on. It’s very easy, all you do is go back to the calendar, find out what was predicted in the calendar and how it came true.  And then the things that haven’t yet come true obviously are going to come true and you predict them literally; it’s very simple.  So let’s go apply the principle.  The basis for Passover and Unleavened Bread, that week of celebration in the spring, was in the Exodus judgment on Pharaoh; it looked back to an event in history and the event was the Exodus, the idea that God came in history and destroyed these people throughout the land of Egypt.  That was one of the historical basis of this feast.  A second basis it had was to remind the people that salvation was by blood, as I explain every communion service; the reason why the people were saved who came out of Egypt was because they had faith in the blood of the lamb.  That’s why they got out, those people were a saved generation that left Egypt and they were saved not because they were religious, not because they were moral and ethical, there could have been a lot of moral and ethical people destroyed in that generation; the people that survived were those that put blood on their door, it’s as simple as that.  And they could have been the most scintillating personality, the most brilliant man who ever lived, still if he had not put blood on the door his firstborn would have been killed.  So the idea here is that God separates on the basis of the blood.

 

That’s the second basis in history, the blood of the lamb.  Now watch it develop. Then the third point about the feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover was that the women, in their cooking, could not use leaven of any sort. Why?  They had to throw out all the leaven. Why was this? Because leaven represents a break, it says in the Bible that the people left Egypt so fast that they couldn’t take the leaven with them and so after they left the country then they had to get leaven again, but there couldn’t take the leaven, there was to be no continuity.  You see, the yeast, etc. would be a continuous thing; over here in Egypt they had yeast and it would grow, a form of leaven, and then they’d take a little bit of that and then they’d make a batch of bread or whatever with it, and of course this yeast would be related to the first yeast, so what they did, they said no, it’s going to be a total break.  Therefore they forced the people to eat unleavened food for seven days to impress upon their minds that there must be a total break, no continuity with the past.  So this is to represent a break.  Now in history how has this been fulfilled? We find exactly to the day the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, was crucified on the very day of Passover, and so now element number one comes down, the judgment that Christ bore on the cross was analogous to the judgment that Pharaoh bore in Egypt.  And not only was this system, this event, on a one to one relationship between the basis and the fulfillment, it happened on the very day.

 

It’s ironical that while Jesus Christ hung on those cross, those same people that hung Him on the cross that day were celebrating the Passover that spoke of Him.  And they wanted to get Him to the cross and hurry up with it so they could get back to the Passover and the Passover spoke of what they had just done, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. And this is why the New Testament says “Behold, the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.”  Jesus Christ, of course, took away the sin, and so we have the second element, the blood of the cross fulfilled literally.

 

And then we have the break, and the fulfillment of the break is that now we have a new creation over and against the old creation, the new creation gives you a legal position in Jesus Christ, a total and complete break with the world.  So what does this tell you about Bible prophecy?  It tells you that it comes true literally.  All these events seen historically became into another historical event that was predicted, and not only did they all get fulfilled, but they all got fulfilled on the very day. 

 

Now we come to the next feast, the next set of Feasts is called Pentecost.  Pentecost is the Greek word for fifty; how is this Pentecost computed?  Turn back to Deut. 16:9, now this will show you if you understand this why the disciples did not wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit.  They stayed and hung around in Jerusalem, not because they were supposed to get the Holy Spirit, they stayed in Jerusalem so they’d be at one point when the Holy Spirit came.  The Holy Spirit was not given to the disciples because they tarried in the upper room.  We have a lot of preachers going around saying that all you have to do brother is wait and tarry and struggle along until the Holy Spirit comes. Friend, if the Holy Spirit hasn’t indwelt your life you’re not even a Christian yet, so just forget the idea of waiting around for the Holy Spirit, you’ll be waiting around for some time because He doesn’t intend to manifest Himself that way and what you’re going to get is a demonic counterfeit of Pentecost if you try it this way.

 

But the disciples waited because it wasn’t yet Pentecost; they weren’t waiting in order to bring about the filling of the Spirit, they were waiting because it wasn’t the time for the Spirit to come. And in verse 9 the instructions are given, “Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou begin to put the sickle to the grain.”  This isn’t corn as we know it in America, this grain.  So the time of the spring harvest, whenever they started to harvest, mark that day. Then they were to go to the Sabbath; suppose it was a Thursday, that’s closest to the next Saturday, so they’d go to the Saturday and start on the Sunday after that Saturday and count 49 days or seven weeks, adding one so they wind up on a Monday, that Monday is Pentecost.  Now what set the cycle off?  The beginning of the harvest.  Who controlled the beginning of the harvest?  God controlled the beginning of the harvest because who controlled the climate to bring the crops to ripeness at just the right time?  It was God who was in control of the nation; we learn this from passages like Jer. 5, etc. that God basically controlled the climate of Israel to make this crop come up sometime during between the 14th and the 21st, some time in there, this crop would be ready for harvesting.  God always worked it out so the harvesting began during this week. And after that week they were to count the nearest Sabbath, go to the Sunday, count 49, add one and get Monday and that’s your fifty days, and that was Pentecost. 

 

Now do you see that Pentecost is strictly a mathematical computation; it has nothing to do with somebody waiting and tarrying for the Holy Spirit.  They’re just waiting until the 50 days are over so the Holy Spirit is going to come, that’s what they were waiting for.  It wasn’t that they got in the upper room and agonized and agonized and agonized until the Holy Spirit came; and when He came it’s kind of a reward for all their agony in the upper room. That wasn’t the point at all.  They were just to wait there until the mathematical computation ran its course and they reached the 50th day. 

 

Now what happened at Pentecost?  It started out with firstfruits.  Say Thursday in the example, the Thursday when the sickle was first put to the grain, that was called the beginning of this keystone, the mathematical keystone and the next Sunday was called Firstfruits.  The Firstfruits was that time when the harvest would first come in, it’s that, incidentally, that’s spoken of in our text.  So therefore what they would do is take that first harvest, the grain, and they would present it before the Lord and hold it up to Him as the first sign of production.  Then 50 days later it was to be Pentecost. When Pentecost came, Pentecost was the end of the harvest.  See, Firstfruits is the beginning, here you have the beginning of the harvest; Pentecost is the end of the harvest.  So you see in this 50 day period it was the spring harvest. That’s the point.  And when Pentecost came the harvest was to be complete. 

 

I gave you the historical basis, now in history as we look back, did that calendar mirror something that would happen in history.  Yes it did, for one Sunday the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead, after being in the grave three days and three nights, and it just turned out in the year that Jesus Christ was crucified, that year, on that Sunday, was the day of Firstfruits, so therefore Jesus Christ rose literally from the dead on that very day, fulfilling Israel’s calendar perfectly.  And He was Firstfruits because Jesus Christ, in His humanity, was the first member of the human race ever to have a resurrection body. That’s why Jesus is called the Firstfruits.

 

Now He told His disciples I want you to wait in Jerusalem until I have given the Holy Spirit to you, and when the Holy Spirit is come, then ye shall be witnesses unto Me, etc.  All right, what does this represent?  Did this literally come true?  Of course it did; we have it recorded in Acts 2, it literally came true on exactly the day of Pentecost. So again we find a third time when God took the calendar of Israel and He literally fulfilled it in history.  What does this tell you as a Christian?  God is exact, it’s always precisely this time, and that’s how you can tell phony prophecy from real legitimate Bible prophecy.  Bible prophecy, in order to validate itself, must be exact.  This is why people, counterfeiters like Jeanne Dixon and other witches that are running around today are people who are not true Biblical prophets because their prophecies do not come literally true all the time.  They might be 99% true but it’s the 1% that identifies them.  And they certainly are supernatural but it’s not from God; you can always spot the phonies.  You can give them two tests, the Bible tells you two tests, one is in Deut. 13, do they teach the Word of God, and the second one is found in Deut. 18, does the prophecy come literally true.  If it doesn’t, even if it’s 1% off it’s wrong because when God prophecies He’s omniscient and He knows every detail.

So let’s look at what’s left in Israel’s calendar. We’ve dealt with the spring and throughout the spring, March and so on, we have this cycle of all these things.  Now we come in history to the fact that Israel’s autumn calendar was never fulfilled, and so there are some events left on Israel’s calendar that have never yet been fulfilled in history.  What are these events?  One of them is the Day of Trumpets.  The Day of Trumpets is going to be the day, approximately our October, when back in the nation Israel they go around blowing great trumpets, announcing the fact that [can’t understand word] second cycle of great dates on the calendar is about to come and in all of the countryside they would blow these trumpets on the Day of Trumpets. 

 

Then the second thing that would happen would be the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the day of the Covering or the Day of the Atonement.  This is the Day of the Atonement in which the nation atoned for its sins by confessing it to the Lord.  And then after this it was to conclude with the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles was a time of tremendous celebration and marked the end of the fall harvest.  The fall harvest in Israel was a harvest of vintage; it was the great vines and so on that they had, tremendous vineyards all over the nation.  And when that harvest was done they were to have a blast, to put it quite frankly that’s what they had, they had a party all over the nation, they had a wonderful time, they enjoyed themselves, they relaxed, etc. and had a great time because the harvest was over and now they could enjoy themselves and relax.  And this is called the Feast of Tabernacles.

 

Now, none of these three features of Israel’s calendar has yet been fulfilled; therefore what are we to do?  If the first features of Israel’s calendar have been literally fulfilled in history, then does it not follow logically that the rest of the calendar should also be fulfilled literally in history?  So therefore this is why we use the calendar in the study of prophecy to lay out what’s coming.  We know the Church Age will end with the rapture; we know after the rapture there will be seven years of tribulation referred to in the book of Daniel.  We know that that age will terminate with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the setting up of the Millennial Kingdom.  We also know that the Feast of Tabernacle mirrors the Millennial Kingdom, from various passages in the Word of God.  So therefore we say look, that Tabernacles means the end of the harvest, people can relax, the struggle is over in history because Christ has come again.  This even tells you what month Christ will return to set up the Millennium.  The Millennium will be set up some year in the fall in the month of October because that is exactly the way the early part of the calendar was fulfilled. Jesus Christ died literally on the day of Passover; Jesus Christ rose literally on the Day of the Firstfruits.  The Holy Spirit came literally on the Day of Pentecost, and in the future the Millennial Kingdom will be set up exactly and literally on this day of Tabernacles, whatever day of the month it happens to be that October of that particular year. 

 

Now what are these other two events? What is the Day of Atonement and what is the Day of Trumpets?  To what do they refer to?  The Day of Trumpets obviously refers to some event, and Bible scholars do not know what, but there is going to be some great event in history in which the nation Israel will be awakened from its sleep and realize that the time of the end has come.  It will be sometime toward the latter end of the Tribulation in the same month, the same month, again using the spring cycles, always occurred in the same year so this occurs in the same October, it won’t be the October of the year before; all these three things will happen that same October in some year in the future, that there’s going to be a tremendous event that’s going to shake Israel to its core spiritually so that she will be awakened to the fact that something imminent is happening in history.  By the tenth day of October of that year, it will be the Day of the Atonement. What is the Day of the Atonement?  Bible prophecy tells us that Israel is going to look upon them whom they have pierced and they are going to weep because at that time there will be a national conversion, instantaneously, so therefore some day in October the nation Israel will literally and actually repent, change their mental attitude, toward the historical person of Jesus Christ and realize that this person of history, Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, and when they do that, that is the signal for God to bring in the Millennium and that same October the Millennium will begin.  What year?  We do not know.  Take the rapture whenever that occurs because that’s the intermediate point, if we could date that we could date it but Jesus says no man knows the end of time, no man knows the end of the age, the rapture could be tomorrow, the rapture could be some other day, but whenever it occurs it will be this day plus seven years and that will give you the rough estimate to what year it will be but we can’t figure it because we’ve got X and we can’t find out what X is.  But whenever the rapture occurs, plus seven, that will be the time, the Second Advent of Christ.

 

Now, all this is mirrored for us in Israel’s calendar, so when we come back to Deut. 26 and we look at the calendar of Israel, we realize that what God is calling this nation to do by taking this basket of fruit and presenting it before the priest at the Firstfruits is to have them act out, you might say role play, for example, you can do this very easy with kids, kids love it, and take some truth, like confession, I’ve done this with some teenagers, where you let one teenager be God the Father, another one be God the Son, another one be Satan, another one be the sinner, and you have them act out what happens at the point of confession.  You have one, here’s the believer, and you have one, Satan, he’s the accuser and he goes to the Father and says I accuse believer B of such and such and such and such and such and such, and then the teenager that is playing the Father says all right, then I have to, by My Law of Rom. 6:23, “the wages of sin is death,” I have to condemn this person and so condemn, condemn, condemn on this count, this count, this count.  And then you have the other teenager that’s playing, it doesn’t have to be teenagers, it works with other ages too, and then you can have this person over here is the Son, and the Son says no, you can’t do that, because I paid for that on the cross, I paid for this, I paid for this, I paid for this, and I paid for that, and he’s clear.  And after you have them go through the process, all of a sudden, I’ve seen this work, it dawns on them what the doctrine of confession is really saying, because you force them to act out the role.  This is role playing.

 

Basically that’s what’s happening here in chapter 26, God is having the nation, the individual citizens of the nation role play by interacting with the calendar so that as they take this basket of fruit they are forced to realize the history of the nation; it’s all wrapped up in that basket they present in verse 3, “And thou shalt go unto the priest in those days,” that’s the authorized priest, “and say unto him, I profess this day unto the LORD thy God, that I am come unto the country which the LORD swore unto our fathers to give us.”  The word “profess” here is the word which means to solemn confess before him, kind of like a pledge of allegiance you might say.  Here begins a recitation of his national history.  It would be like you as an American reciting your national history, if you could remember it. They don’t teach it any more, they’re too busy teaching sex.  But they used to teach national history so we understood where our constitution came from, we understood some of the issues behind the American Revolution and didn’t get this jazz like I read in a Christian magazine, it’s pathetic, Christians getting absorbed in this, I read in a national missionary magazine, one of the most outstanding missionary magazines and if I mentioned the name you’d all recognize it and this man is reputed to be one of the greatest missionary spokesmen in Christianity today and he was so fouled up when it came to the knowledge of the American Revolution that it was absolutely pathetic.  The people who were the status quo were the patriots behind the American Revolution.  The American Revolution was not a revolution; the American Revolution was a counter revolution against the revolutionary radical policies of King George III and his cronies in England.  And so what the American patriots did was they had their rights as Englishmen at the beginning of the 18th century, and then George III decided he was going to come into England, along with a few other kings, and take over, and he was the radical, not the Americans.  It was this clod on the English throne that decided he was going to change things, he was changing the status quo and the American patriots said you aren’t going to change it.  So the American patriots were not revolutionaries, absolutely not.  In no way can they be identified with the revolutionaries of Russia or can they be identified with the French Revolution or anything like that.  The American Revolution was not a revolution; the American Revolution was trying to get back to standards that had already existed and don’t ever buy that line. 

 

With quotes like from the head of a large missionary organization, you can see why the Christian church is having its problems; they can’t even get American history straight, what are they going to do with doctrine?  Do you know why they can’t get American history straight?  I’ll tell you why, because a lot of missionaries are prone to listen to ignorant foreign Christians, Christians in other lands who mouth and lip off at America and they don’t like American ideas, they don’t like this and they don’t like, and some of their gripes are valid, but what happens?  These folks listen and listen and after a while it wears off on them and they begin to believe it, just because a Christian says it it has to be true.  And these Christians in foreign lands know next to nothing about our history; they shouldn’t be paid attention to one second.  I don’t listen to a person unless they have qualifications.  No American should ever listen to criticism of idiots, whether they are Christian idiots or non-Christian idiots they’re still idiots. 

 

This goes on and we have this tremendous maligning and a tremendous movement against American history; it proceeds from two basic motivations.  One, the revolutionists of our day want your sympathy.  How are they going to get your sympathy?  They know that you respect things of the American Revolution, if they could identify themselves with George Washington, with the great patriots behind our county, they’d have your allegiance; at least they would emotionally weaken you in your opposition to them. So that’s one motivation.  The second motivation is that a liberal can never stand a person this is greater than himself; he will always try to malign people and it basically stems from jealousy.  The men that started this country were great, great men.  Blackstone’s Law Commentary I’m told was a best seller around the Colonies, people studied law, they knew law and they could spot issues.  And yet in this country when we have an election, who gets elected? The guy that parts his hair on the right side of his head or something and he gets elected because all the ladies vote for him or something.  That’s what happens, we have a popularity contest when we have an election; we used to have election on the basis of principles. 

 

The last man to stand for principles was Gen. Douglas MacArthur and nobody could stand him personally because he kind of a nasty personality, talked out of the side of his mouth every once in a while, people don’t like that, you’re supposed to be polite, shake everybody’s hand, etc. And yet had this country listened to Douglas MacArthur we wouldn’t be where we are.  But it’s the old story, we want personality over principle and we’ve got it; that’s the problem, we’ve got it. 

So Israel, in order to prevent this, was given this procedure.  She was to review her history every year she had to review it. Every citizen, every real citizen had to do this, and we can compare with other Scriptures in Leviticus, they had to go through this ceremony which would review what they had done in their history.  So here in verse 5 begins the recitation of his country’s history; it’s like our pledge of allegiance in which he says this is where we are as a nation, we have gotten here not because of human works, we’ve gotten here by divine grace. 

 

“And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father,” that’s referring to Jacob, it isn’t the word “Syrian,” actually in Hebrew it’s the word Aramean, “Aramean was my father, constantly read to perish,” and this means that Jacob had just about had it.  Do you know why Jacob had just about had it?  Jacob wasn’t literally physically ready to perish. What Jacob’s problem was that he had gotten involved in what we now call today syncretism.  He had a little problem with the Canaanites; some of his sons were out dating Canaanite girls.  And they were told leave the girls alone, you can find plenty of good-looking girls up in the north where mom comes from.  And instead of sending his sons up there to look for a girlfriend they started dating around the Canaanites and before long a couple of them married them, and so Jacob was in danger of totally annihilating the Jewish family at that point.  Now intermarriage, not because of a racial problem, but because of a spiritual problem; these Canaanites had all sorts of negative volition and by marrying these girls they would bring negative volition into the family unit and destroy the next generation.  This is why Jacob is called in verse 5 “a wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few,” literally 70 although some people like to point out a contradiction in Acts 14 where it says 75, answer is that Stephen was following the Septuagintal text that adds people.  “…and became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. 

 

Why did Jacob have to go to Egypt?  Jacob went down into Egypt; there were three reasons why Jacob had to spend time in Egypt; the first reason was that his family had to grow into a nation.  God had to put them in Egypt.  I had a professor in seminary that had a tremendous illustration of this, Egypt is like a womb and the baby has to grow to the point where it can be born inside the protection of the womb. So what God did was utilize the nation Egypt as a womb and inside that womb he planted Jacob and Jacob’s family slowly expanded and expanded so that by Moses day it had multiplied into a tremendous nation. 

 

The second reason why Jacob went down into Egypt was he had to learn a little discipline.  He had to learn that you don’t mix with unbelievers in the sense of cooperating by marital relationships, etc.  So guess what God did?  He picked out the Egyptians. Why the Egyptians? Because the Egyptians couldn’t stand Semites and they wouldn’t even eat at the table with them.  In Joseph’s day the Jews would be at one end of the table, the Egyptians would be at the other, they couldn’t even stand to eat with these people. So what God did is simply He picked out a policy of segregation and He said look, you can’t stand this, what I’m going to so is I’m going to send you down into Egypt and brother, you can’t mix down there because they’ve got it all against you so they had to be trained down there under very horrible conditions but they learned, for a while, it lasted for about two generations. 

 

The third reason was that God had to let the Amorites, the people who lived back in the land, the Canaanites if you want to call them by that name, He had to let these people sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin until they destroyed their consciences and by that time they could be annihilated and when Moses and Joshua came back their job was to utterly destroy this nation.

 

Verse 6, “And the Egyptians badly treated us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage.”  This, by the way, symbolizes in this same typological sense that I showed before; it symbolizes you.  If you are a Christian and you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior, at one time in your life you were doing the same thing spiritually as Israel was doing in Egypt physically and that was that you were in bondage; you were in bondage to the flesh.  Now some Christians are still in bondage to the flesh; the reason is they haven’t understood how to use the operating assets God has given.  But the unbeliever is in bondage to flesh; he has no freedom to do what he wants to do or what he knows to be right.  He has no freedom to obey. So therefore this mirrors us.  [“7, “And when we cried unto the LORD God of our fathers, the LORD heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labor, and our oppression.”]

 

In verse 8, “And the LORD brought us forth out of Egypt with a might hand,” here is a testimony to God’s grace, and every male every year had to testify, this is what God has done, He has brought me, I didn’t bring myself, my great-great grandfather back in the Exodus generation didn’t pick up his staff one afternoon and say I’m leaving the country because Pharaoh wouldn’t have let him do it, but the reason why my great-great grandfather left was because God led him out, just like God led out the founders of this nation from a cesspool otherwise known in history as Europe. And why it is that ridiculous Americans want to go back to Europe to get culture; our forefathers left it because they couldn’t stand it and if we reviewed history and we understood that generation we’d understand why our forefathers left that cesspool and we wouldn’t have anything to do with it.  But no, we don’t understand history any more.  Israel, you’ll see this again and again in the Old Testament, had a fantastic historical memory.  Dr. Albright says this nation is unique in the history of civilization for historical memory.  No other nation on earth has ever remembered its history like Israel.  And God had all these dramatic role playing devices to make sure that you’d never forget your history.

 

We come to the end of verse 8 and we find how God did it, He did it “with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with awe-inspiring terror, and with signs, and with wonders.”  Now I want to look at those words, “signs and wonders” because that is how God works when He is working with Israel, not with the Church.  “Signs and wonders” are the hallmark of God’s plan when applied to Israel. There were three times in history when we had signs and wonders: Moses’ generation and Joshua’s generation, Elijah’s generation, and Isaiah’s generation, and Jesus’ generation and the apostle’s generation and in all three cases it was because God was doing something great.  In Moses era it was setting up the kingdom; in Elijah’s era it was taking away the kingdom, and in Jesus era it was offering the kingdom again.  That is why you have these three pinnacles.  If you’re a statistician and would like to do a study, take a piece of graph paper, go through the Bible and plot by time the number of miracles that are recorded and you’ll have three peaks and they correspond to these periods of history because at those periods God was working in a great way with the nation Israel. So that shows you that a lot of the signs in the book of Acts are directed not toward us as Christian, they are directed back for the nation Israel. 

 

Verse 9, “And He hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey,” a characteristic of the land represents tremendous milk, animal production, and honey, plant production, tremendous production of this nation. Verse 10, “And now, behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land, which thou, O LORD, has given me.  And thou shalt set it before the LORD thy God, and worship before the LORD thy God.”  And at this point this part of the confession was over, it was ended, the man has laid his basket there and he stepped back to praise God.  What is the content of this confession?  His confession is that I am blessed by grace.  Now, in other words, my blessings that I have aren’t due to my scintillating personality, my educational background, my effort, my blessings are due to God’s grace; it is retrospective, looking back and saying my blessings flow from God’s grace.

 

Example: every time you think of how God brought you to Himself, or every time you think of how God has answered prayer in your life as a Christian you are really doing the same thing.  You are looking back on your past personal history and saying what I am now is by God’s grace.  [“11, “And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God has given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you.”]

 

Now, in verses 12-15 we have another confession of faith but this is different, and to understand this you have to know the difference between the Old and the New Covenant.  We have an Old Covenant and a New Covenant.  The Old Covenant is the Law of Moses; the New Covenant is the Law of Jesus Christ.  So we have Christ and Moses.  The Old Covenant looked forward; Israel’s faith was forward.  This is why your early dispensationalists said in the Old Testament you obey in order to be blessed; in the New Testament you obey because you have been blessed in time past.  That’s a pretty good statement of this because in the Old Covenant the blessing potential for the nation was conditioned on their present obedience.  They looked back, that’s what we’ve already had, a retrospective thing, just like ours, but they had this additional thing that we do not have. 

 

Verse 12, “When thou hast made an end  of tithing all the tithes of thine increase the third year,” an entirely different situation now, “which is the year of tithing, and has given it unto the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat within thy gates, and be filled,” you see they gave their income tax in the nation was one tenth, 10%, that was income tax, not free will offerings as we have in the Church.  People don’t tithe in the Church Age; it’s wrong, tithing applies to the nation Israel.  Now the income tax was 10% and I imagine if you paid 10% on your income tax you’d think [can’t understand words].  Do knock the tithing, it was the national budget and it was devoted, two-thirds of it went to provide Bible teaching.  Now get a load of this, two-thirds of the national budget went to finance the Levites.  And their job was to be Bible teachers in all the major cities. Two-thirds of the national budget went to missionaries and Bible teachers.  One-third went to welfare; every third year they took all their… a tenth of their produce and put it in great storehouses so they had a poverty program in the sense that nobody was ever to starve to death in Israel.  Israel had a very merciful system where there would never be an excuse for a person starving to death; there was always food and this was how they supplied it.  And in verse 12 you see the people, this is the third year that had come here in verse 12 and instead of bringing the tithe to the priest, what had they done with it?  They’d left it in the cities.  See, they had localized… here’s a city, here’s a city, here’s a city, here’s a city, people from this city kept their tithes there, people from this city kept their tithes there, people from this city kept their tithes there, so in city A, city B, city C, you had storehouse for the poor.  Notice it wasn’t a federally administered program; it was a locally administered program under the control of that city.

Well then obviously in verse 12 when these people come to the priest they don’t have anything, right, they’ve already given it back to the local storehouse.  So this is what they say; usually they give it to the priest, here, here are my tithes, but they didn’t have the tithes in the third year so this is what they said instead:

 

Verse 13, “Then thou shalt say before the LORD thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house” that refers to the tithe, “and also have given them unto the Levite, and unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow,” all those categories are people that are economically helpless; the widow in Israel had no one to support her.  If a girl had lost her husband she had no way to hold the land, she had no way to get a job, she had no way to make a go for herself economically, and so the widow was looked upon as a guardianship of the state, she must be protected, she must be given her food, she must be allowed to tend to the necessities of life; the orphan, the fatherless, literally, it says the “orphan” in the Hebrew, a child without any parents, again was helpless, was at the mercy… and so God in His grace worked out in society so that these children, the homeless children would not be neglected.  And the Levite, these are the Bible teachers and they were not to have any income and they too had to depend on this thing, these are the local Levites now, not the ones that are going around at the Temple sanctuary teaching the Word.  “… according to all thy commandments which thou hast commanded me.  I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them.”  Do you see what this is saying?  I’ve obeyed God, I’ve taken Your Word and I’ve obeyed it, now bless me. 

 

And that’s what’s going to happen in verse 14, “I have not eaten thereof in my mourning,” this means he has not given the tithing to a funeral, “neither have I taken away anything thereof for any unclean use nor given anything thereof for the dead, [but I have hearkened to the voice of the LORD my God, and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me.]” do you know why God picks this out here at this point?  Because there was a tendency in the ancient world to honor the dead and they would take food, a roast from the starving people and give it to the dead, they put it in the grave.  People could be starving all over the land but because of the religious nature of the day they took this food that people needed for their own physical bodies and dumped it into the grave for the dead because they were afraid the dead might starve when the people that were living were starving.  This is religion of course, and of course religion always hurts people.  Religion is the source of more problems in America than any other cause and basically it’s because it’s basically satanic; Christianity is not a religion it’s a personal relationship with Christ. 

 

So we have these religious people that would do this and God says I don’t want you to do it, never mind the dead, you can’t do anything for the dead.  This is why when I have a funeral the first thing I say at that funeral is this service is for the living and not for the dead; what am I supposed to do, preach a sermon to somebody that’s dead in a coffin?  They’re not there anyway; if he’s a Christian he’s in the presence of the Lord.  A funeral is to call attention divine facts from the Word of God and it’s to be directed toward the people who are living.  One of the worst things you ever see in a funeral is this open casket business where you have the casket open and everybody comes up and bursts into tears, great emotion, etc.  When you die, tell the people to close the casket, you’re not there, we don’t honor the body; the person is in the presence of the Lord.  The funeral service should be a time of recuperation for those who have lost a loved one; that’s the aim of the funeral service, to provide comfort for the living, not for the dead.  No prayers are ever authorized for the dead.  When a person dies, that is it.  So in verse 14 God says just forget this jazz about giving food for the dead. 

 

Verse 15, “Look down from Thy holy habitation, from heaven, and bless thy people, Israel, and the land which thou hast given us,” I’ll show you the promise that was being claimed at this point.  Turn back to Deut. 14:28, here’s the promise that they’re claiming.  I want you to see how these people claim promises.  You should know this.  The last two verses of chapter 14 is the promise they’re claiming.  What does the promise say, “At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the tithe of thine increase the same year, and shalt lay it up within thy gates,” the Levite and so on, they’re going to eat it, and look at the last part of verse 29 and you’ll see a purpose clause, “that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.”  That’s your promise, if you do this, then God will do this.

 

Back to chapter 26 what are they saying?  I have done this job, I’ve obeyed Your Word, now bless me, and that’s the way the Old Testament saint would operate, he would claim God’s blessing on the basis of his obedience.  Now this is [can’t understand words] the only thing that would correspond to this in your life would be in the sense that when you come into a problem situation in your life as a Christian and you get to this point, you can retrospect and say, if you look back and say Lord, I know Rom. 8:28, “all things work together for good to them that loved God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” and the corollary to that is found in 1 Thess. 5:18, “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you,” and some of you are miserable Christians because you have never given thanks for the problem that’s bugging you.  And you blame it on some other person and you say if God’s going to treat me this way then the heck with God.  And yet God has told you that all things work together for good and your response as a Christian should be “thank you Lord.”  Just relax and thank the Lord for it, you don’t know how He’s going to work this out for good in your life but you, by faith, give thanks for it and you’ll find it does wonders. 

 

And the next thing you do, you look forward, 1 Pet. 5:7, “casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you,” and so you take these problems, the big question marks that are facing you and you say I’m going to trust the Lord to work this out.  That doesn’t mean you sit around and do nothing, you’re not a zombie, but you trust the Lord to work it out in your life.  That’s forward looking faith; backward you give thanks for the situation that’s led you to the moment, forward in the sense that you take your problems, your future worries, the things that are bothering you and you lay them on the Lord.  That’s the closest thing that corresponds.  All the blessings in the Church are past; when it comes to the Church… I’m just giving you what you do as an individual, when it comes to us as a Church we’ve been blessed. Eph. 1:3 says He has already blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, there is no more future blessing left for you as a member of the Church. The only thing you have is the individual details of life but as far as the Church we do not have a prospective thing like this in front of us.  I want to make that clear, that in verses 12-15 here you’re looking at something different than is valid for the Church. 

 

Now summary, verses 16-19 he introduces the section we’ll begin next week, but it has to do with the ratifying of the Covenant.  This plan was finished with the Law; we’ve gone through this month after month and now we come here.  By the way, do you know this was one sermon on Moses part; if you can imagine Moses preached this, this was his last message to his people, one whole sermon.  I wonder how the people could possibly stand through it; sometime I’m going to read through it and see how long it takes to see how long his sermon must have been.  It must have been a fantastic one.

 

Verse 16 is the conclusion of this section, “This day the LORD thy God has commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments,” statutes refers to commands to your conscience; judgments the civil law, “thou shalt, therefore, keep and do them with all thine heart, and with all thy soul.”  Heart refers to you’re your inner mental attitude; soul refers to the details of your life, the various things that you have opportunities here, here, here, and here, to obey the commandment here, obey this one over here, etc.  That’s loving the Lord with your soul. 

 

Verse 17, “Thou hast avowed the LORD this day to be thy God,” the word “avowed” here is the word to say, and it’s in the hiphiel tense in the Hebrew which means to cause to say, and it’s a technical term when a covenant is ratified.  Now this verse, verse 17, should be translated this way.  “You, Israel, have caused the LORD to say I am your God,” it’s just a technical phraseology which means that they’ve entered into relationship, and He responds and has ordered you “to walk in His easy, and to keep His statutes and His commandments, and His judgments, and to hearken to His voice.”

 

Then verse 18 and 19 is what the Lord has avowed them, “And the LORD has caused you this day to say I am His peculiar people,” now this doesn’t mean oddballs, it means a unique people, a special people, “as He has promised thee, and that thou should keep all His commandments.”  Now verse 19 is what God has promised and with this we close this section of the Law. What a tremendous promise.  By the way, this shows you that this book was written when the Bible says it was written, in Moses time.  It was not a later product of some liberal lead actor in the age of the kings like all the liberals say, for if it had been this promise would never have fit the later ages.  In the later ages there was no longer this optimism; the nation was doomed, and it’s such an optimistic verse, verse 19 could never have been coined in the later era.  This is one of the hallmarks that Moses literally wrote this book.  “And to make thee high above all nations which He has made, in praise, and in name, and in honor, and that thou may be an holy people unto the LORD thy God, as He has spoken.”

 

So therefore this is the last challenge that Moses gives and beginning next week we’ll work with 27:1, the blessings and the cursings and get into how this Law was instituted. We have come to the end of that codification of the Mosaic Law and as Moses closes this section he’s giving the commands, now take this law and apply it.  As we come to the Bible lesson and we get through the various doctrines, we say Christian, you know the information now, nobody is standing over you with a club, I’m not going to come knocking on your door, checking up to see how many brownie points or anything else, it’s up to you.  You have the information, you know how to handle it, if you don’t to fine, if you do, get with it.