Lesson 78
Law and Grace – 32:19-43
In chapter 32 we have been working through the Song of Moses, one of the
most famous songs in Scripture, and which, by the way, is an illustration of
true Biblical hymnology. Most of the
hymnals were written by spiritual ignoramuses who did not understand Bible
doctrine with the result that we have sentimentalism, we have subjectivism, and
we have heresies in some of the hymns and just pure junk in some of the other ones. Unfortunately in the hymnology of fundamental
churches we do not have quality, in music nor in lyrics. This is why we have to be careful; I don’t
intend to teach the Word of God and then have the whole congregation sing 3 or
4 hymns denying just what I got through teaching. This is why we have to have consistency and
why in our day when emphasis is on feelings, on the emotions, on the inner
substance we deliberately over-emphasize the objective; this is to contrast and
balance with our age.
Chapter 32 evidently had to be memorized by all of the great prophets of
the nation
We find in history that every time the suzerain vassal treaties were
violated the suzerain would come down.
Say vassal king #1 violated the terms of the treaty by not being
loyal. When he violated the terms of the
treaty, the suzerain would come back on him with a rib. It looks like “rib” but
it’s pronounced reeve. A rib was the Hebrew word for lawsuit, and
when the suzerain comes down on the vassal king he would spell out the terms of
the violation of the treaty by a certain legal procedure. This legal outline has been given many times
in Deuteronomy and I’ll give it again.
Deut. 32 basically has three sections to it. These three sections mirror
the classical rib document.
These three sections are verses 1-14, the court procedure; in that
section you have introduced the parties to the lawsuit. They are briefly described and the nature of
the case is set forth. In verses 15-18
you have the accusation of the court, and here the rib controversy erupts because after the court proceeding you have
the accusation, what is wrong specifically, detail and specifics. For example, someone asked me when you
confess your sins using 1 John 1:9 do you confess your sins specifically?
Answer: yes because the terms of the treaty were always specific and to the
point. It doesn’t mean that you confess
every sin; if you confessed every sin you ever did you’d be from now until hell
froze over before you got through it. So
you don’t confess everything, you confess the sin since last time you confessed
your sin and you confess the sins that are in your conscious mind, the sins
that are in your subconscious and the unconscious section of your mind are
covered with the last phrase of 1 John 1:9, “and He will cleanse you from all
unrighteousness.” So cleansing from sin
depends on specific confession. Here we
have specific accusation. Where the
nation went wrong was specifically spelled out in these rib controversies.
The third part of a rib
document is called the sentencing and in verses 19-26 is the sentence that is
passed by the court. There is some difference here, in that a court in our land
the judge lays down the sentence. The
jury decides guilty, not guilty, then the judge lays the sentence down. There’s a difference here; in the rib controversy when a suzerain went to
the vassal the suzerain would come to the vassal and the suzerain would lay
down the sentence ala the treaty, in other words, you have the treaty here; the
treaty specified in it what would happen if this boy got funny, how would he be
spanked? The treaty said so and so what
you have is not the fact that the court is seeking a sentence, what you have is
that the court is laying down the terms of the treaty. The treaty, in other words, is already there,
the sentence is already there, it’s being applied to this case. And this is what the sentence portion is.
However, beginning in verse 27-43 we have a clause that is unknown in the
history of Ancient Near Eastern jurisprudence, and this is what we call the
grace clause. This is what sets the
Bible off from secular law. God is a God of grace and when He gets through
sentencing, immediately beginning in verse 27 he says He is not going to
destroy the nation, though the nation legally could be under the treaty. So
verses 27-43 are the gracious assurance.
Now let’s go to verse 19 and deal with the sentence. Here we have the specific sentence that
Jehovah makes against the nation.
Something to remember as we go through this is I want you to notice how
picayune God is to, when He deals with the nation, when he deals with
individuals, to be very careful and precise in saying that when I punish you I
want you to know why I am punishing you.
God doesn’t do like some parents are often tempted to do, just clobber
the brat. Often times we are tempted to
do this, but when God clobbers he always spells out in detail why He is
clobbering, otherwise the clobbering doesn’t have any beneficial effects. So when He sets forth this thing, notice the
specific charges, beginning at verse 19.
“And when the LORD saw it,” saw what? Saw verses 15-18, there was the
accusation, that’s what they did, verse 17 said they sacrificed to demons and
there we saw the dilemma that philosophy has always presented to man, if a man
is sincere and he worships an idol is he worshiping God? Answer: no!
He’s worshiping a demon behind the idol; that’s verse 17. So these are
the things that were covered in verses 15-18.
Now in verse 19 the LORD sees this, “He abhorred them,” the word “abhor”
means to spurn or cast off, and this introduces us to two categories of the
relationship between Israel and God and you have to know these two different
relationship or you are going to be mixed up and draw the wrong conclusions out
of this passage. The first relationship
between the nation Israel and God is one of a family; it is based on the
Abrahamic Covenant as amplified by the Palestinian Covenant as amplified by the
Davidic Covenant, as amplified by the New Covenant. The Abrahamic Covenant is an unconditional
covenant which says that God will accomplish certain things through the nation
Israel. God will definitely accomplish
certain things for the nation Israel. It
doesn’t mean irrespective of human volition because God has so set up history
that He knows where the volition is going to go positive and negative, etc. and
He’s worked it all out. But we have the
Abrahamic Covenant here; the Abrahamic Covenant is the basis for relationship
#1.
Relationship #2 is that of legal nation and that is spelled out in the
Mosaic Law. Those two are different. Why
is it important to distinguish between the two? Because in verse 19 here you
have the Lord spurning Israel, He’s spurning them in this relationship, #2, not
#1. God is not casting off the nation in
the #1 sense of the Word. Let’s put it
another way; again and again we draw a diagram on here that indicates when you
receive Jesus Christ as Savior God the Holy Spirit enters you into union with
Christ. That’s the top circle, that’s
your position, it never changes. That’s
eternal and immutable. However, you have
your experience, this changes, this is in history, this is where you are and at
any given moment you are in the bottom circle or you’re out of the bottom
circle. Now let’s make a parallel:
between Israel and God the same thing applies.
You have a top circle spelled out by the Abrahamic Covenant as amplified
by the Palestinian Covenant, Davidic Covenant, and New Covenant and down below
you have the Mosaic Law. At any given
time the nation is obedient to Jehovah as her Lord or she is disobedient as her
Lord, she’s out here.
Lordship, by the way, has nothing to do with salvation. Lordship has to do with the bottom circle,
not the top circle. The top circle, once
entered always entered. Israel is never
going to be cast out of this top circle.
However, those Israelites that are in the top circle are those who are
born again, those who have received Christ under the Old Testament economy. The Mosaic Law is the one that is
conditional, this guarantees nothing, it just says this is God’s
revelation.
So remember the top and bottom circles, and what we are talking about
tonight is God disciplining; He is taking the nation out of the bottom circle.
Example: you as a believer, if you are out of fellowship with God and you get
out in the toulies somewhere, God the Holy Spirit begins to discipline you and
you’ll be a miserable believer and the most miserable people you will ever run into
in your life are Christians; some of you businessmen think you can make a deal
with another person just because they are a Christian; nonsense, you’ll get
cheated left and right; you make your deals with an honest businessman and
secondarily whether he’s a Christian or not.
Being a Christian, he may be out of it, God may be disciplining him and
his business and if you’ve made a deal with him you’re asking for it too. So
you watch out when you go in on some business deal with some other person who
claims to be a Christian. That person could be out of fellowship and God could
be disciplining him and you get involved in a business relationship with him
and you get spanked, the principle of 1 Pet. 3 where Peter says no man bears
these things to himself, etc. he says you are disciplined because of your close
relationship to someone else who is being disciplined, so watch out.
Here we have a person outside of the bottom circle, he is being
disciplined. In verse 20 God says, and
he begins to pronounce sentence upon him.
First in verse 20 the negative; then in verse 21 the positive. The negative first, “And He said, I will hide
My face from them, I will see what their end shall be; for they are a very
perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.” In verse 20 God is saying I am going to hide
My face. Hiding the face is an idiom
which means withholding blessing… withholding blessing! So God is going to withhold the promised
blessing on the nation. Now is this some
nebulous abstruse blessing? No, it’s
physical. God’s blessing on Israel was
climate, through the climate the agriculture because it was an agrarian
economy, and you could sit there and measure, it was objective and measurable
the blessing. These are material
blessings and God says I’m going to hide My face from them and I’m going to see
what their end shall be.
Verse 21, the positive. Now verse
21 is an example of sarcasm in Scripture.
I’m sorry some of you people react to sarcasm the way you do because in
our generation you really do not know what true sarcasm is. We have smarty things that pass off for
sarcasm but the Word of God has some very profound sarcasm in it. And this is
one of those great classic verses that express sarcasm in Scripture. This is repeated several times in the
prophets. “They have moved me to
jealousy with a no God;” I’m giving you the literal translation here, “They
have moved me to jealousy with a no God; they provoked me to anger with their
vanities,” habelim, this is the word
from Solomon, habel, or vanities,
emptiness, vanities means vapor, thing that isn’t there, it means human
viewpoint, it means there’s no substance to it, a person without the divine
viewpoint framework in the mentality of their soul.
So in verse 21 they have moved God to jealousy, now watch the irony as
it shifts after vanities, here’s God sentence, “they have provoked Me to anger
with their vanities, now I will move them to jealousy with a no people, [with
those who are not a people]” they moved Me to jealousy with a no-God, all right,
I’ll move them to jealousy with a no-people.
So now we have no-people. You are
the no-people incidentally. “I will move
them to jealousy with a no people, and I will provoke them to anger with an
idiot [foolish] nation.” This answers to
vanities here, an “idiot nation.” So we
have this parallel, and this is sarcasm in Scripture. This is where God is taking something that
they have done to Him and He’s turning it around laughing at them, ha-ha, you
provoked Me to jealousy with a no-God, all right, I’ll provoke you to jealousy
with a no-people.
How did God do this? The
no-people are the Gentiles; they are classified as a no-people because a
no-people means that they have no status before God. So you have the Gentiles. Turn to Hosea 1:9, I want to show you how the
prophets picked the language up of Deuteronomy.
Hosea was a very strange individual, but God asked Hosea to live a life
of suffering, and that life of suffering would become a model to the nation. Hosea was asked to do silly things. By the
way, do you know one of the silly things the prophets were asked to do? Walk around without any clothes on, of course
it was called by God to illustrate a point, not that we’re advocating that kind
of activity. But in Hosea is another
strange incident in the life of a prophet.
Verse 8, “now when she had weaned [Hosea’s wife] Loruhamah, she
conceived, and bore a son. [9] Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi; for ye are
not My people, and I will not be your God.”
“Lo” is the Hebrew prefix for know, “ammi” or “am” means people, you
know that from Abraham, that’s where you get it, people, the “h” is just
phonetic, and “mi” is the first common singular suffix, “I” or “mine,” Lo-ammi,
you are not My people. And he had a
child, wouldn’t you love to have a child named Lo-ammi, come here Lo-ammi, how
are you Lo-ammi, that was this poor kid’s name, suffering. So he was called Lo-ammi and he was to
illustrate that the nation by this time was becoming the status of a no-people.
The second time this occurred is in Hoses 2:23, “And I will sow her unto
Me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy;
and I will say to them who were not My people, thou art My people; and they
shall say, Thou art my God.” Here we
have God looking forward in history to the time when Gentiles will come into
the program of salvation in a very real and direct sense.
Let’s go to the New Testament to pick up how Paul uses the same thoughts
of Deut. 32, as developed by the prophets and now Paul says the same thing in
Rom. 9:25, “As He saith also in Hosea, I will call them My people, who were not
My people; and her beloved, who was not beloved.” You see Paul is quoting Hosea and he goes on,
Rom. 10:19, he quotes Moses, Deut. 32, “But I say, Did not Israel know? First
Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by a no people, and by a foolish
nation I will anger you.” So you see
Paul is picking up Deut. 32 and he ties it in with the olive tree. The olive
tree represents the on-going program of God.
Now God at a certain time in history removes branches from that tree,
Paul said. This is not teaching
violation of eternal security. People
that say that have no understanding of covenants. What he is saying is I’m removing the unsaved
portion of the nation Israel as they go forward in history and in place of
those branches I take wild branches and graft them in. Those “wild branches” are you; if you have
personally received Jesus Christ as Savior, you are saved only because at one
point in history God made a legal commitment to one nation called Israel; and
if Jesus Christ had been a Gentile you wouldn’t be saved. If Jesus Christ had come into the world and
done all sorts of things in violation of those covenants you would still not
saved. You are saved because of God’s
historic program through the nation Israel in the Old Testament. That program is theolatry and those branches
brought in are the Gentiles.
Paul says later on in this chapter in Rom. 11:15 Paul teaches that these
branches will be brought back, the ones that have been broken off will be
brought back in the future, “for if the casting away of them be the reconciling
of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? [16]
For if the first fruit be holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root be holy,
so are the branches. [17] And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou,
being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them partake of
the root and fatness of the olive tree, [18] Boast not against the branches.” Then he says in verse 21, “For if God spared
not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. [22] Behold,
therefore, the goodness and severity of God,” and he goes on to say that in
verse 26, “All Israel shall be saved, as sit is written,” etc. In other words, God’s historic program
through Israel is not finished. Right
now in history He has stopped it, you might say, and he is now bringing
Gentiles into their covenant structure.
But the prophecy says that in the future “all Israel shall be saved,” of
course at the Second Advent of Jesus Christ.
What does this signal in history?
That this point of Deut. 32 has been reached. The great signal that will tip off the nation
that they are entering what we have called the fifth degree of discipline …
Lev. 26, there are five degrees of discipline, God is going to spank the nation
once and if they don’t get with it He’s going to spank them again, spank them
again, spank them again and finally in the fifth spanking they area going to go
into the Diaspora, or the dispersion.
That’s the fifth cycle of discipline in Lev. 26. But the sign that the nation was in the fifth
cycle or just about to go in is found in Isaiah 28:11, here’s the signal in
history that this was about to occur. Tongues
are the sign of the fifth cycle of discipline on Israel and that and that alone
is the purpose of tongues. “For with
stammering lips and another tongue,” literally another language, “will I speak
to you [will He speak to this people].”
And this context of Isaiah 28 if you study it carefully is not a context
of blessing; tongues aren’t a sign of blessing, tongues are a sign of cursing
and discipline on the nation Israel and they are the means by which the gospel
is presented to Jewish people in the first era of the Church. Tongues have lost their purpose in
history. The Church has been built on
the foundation of the apostles and prophets and you don’t build a foundation day
after day, year after year, century after century of church history. You build a foundation once and after the
foundation is built you don’t build it again.
And what you see as a tremendous revival of the charismatic movement
today has some very, very suspicious characteristics. Before you go off at 90 mph worrying about
the charismatic movement you ought to take a long hard look at it. There are doctrinal aberrations in the
movement, tongues are said to be sources of blessing when they are not the
source of blessing, they signs to the nation Israel, and they are in Corinth and
1 Cor. 12-14 because there were Jews in Corinth, Corinth was the great
mercantile center of the Mediterranean area.
Don’t be snowed by the tongues movement.
Isaiah 28:11 gives you the purpose of tongues and that purpose has been
finished. The fifth cycled occurred in
70 AD when Titus, following his father, Vespasian, moved in and destroyed the
Temple. When that was accomplished the purpose for tongues ceased. So tongues from Isaiah is clearly indicated
as a sign and a sign to Israel.
Turn back to Deut. 32; again we pick up this theme of God judging the
nation, “And I will provoke them to anger with a no people,” in other words
God’s historic program is going to go to the Gentiles. It’s ironic here, whose gods did Israel adopt
before she went into discipline. This is
how ironic God’s justice is. You see,
Israel became apostate by going to the gods of the Gentiles; now isn’t it
ironic, Moses is saying, there’s going to come a time in history when the
Gentiles are going to give up their gods and come to your God and you’re going
to be over there caught holding the bag because you’re going to be worshipping
their gods, they’re going to come over and worship your God. So we have millions and millions of people who
have worshiped the God of Israel through Jesus Christ in history; a fantastic
thing! When you received Christ as
Savior, I don’t know what your country you came from, your forefathers, if they
came from northern Europe, probably worshiped Rotan or some of the German gods,
etc. they were pagan gods and that’s your background, pagan background in your
family history. So when you receive
Christ as Savior what happens? You
accepted the God of Israel and gave up your Gentile heritage. And yet he says here at this point in history
that Israel has given up here heritage to get the Gentile gods. The grass is always greener on the other side
of the fence.
Verse 22, “For a fire is kindled in Mine anger,” God is speaking in the
accusation now, “a fire is kindled in Mine anger, and shall burn unto the
lowest sheol, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire
the foundations of the mountains.” This
is not just poetic language. Christians
always get hysterics when they read something like this and they’re so afraid
of geology or something else bothering them.
Listen, you take the text literally or you don’t take it. You let geology take care of itself but you
take the text literally. If you can’t
take this text literally just put it in a basket because if you have to fudge
around your interpretation every time someone makes a pronouncement that this
not an infallible book, then you might as well just kiss it goodbye because
it’s no authority whatever. Be honest
about it.
So when we come here in verse 22 and we read about “the foundations of
the mountains,” this is not just poetic language; the Word of God testifies to
something that secular historians have been very reluctant until about 1950 to
grant, and that is that there have been tremendous catastrophes in history. These catastrophes sprang, for example,
around 1440 BC with the Exodus. We had
fantastic catastrophes; on the island of Crete you have archeological debris
dating around this level. In Palestine
you have burn levels in some of the cities dating 1400 BC. This was a time of worldwide
catastrophe. Velikovsky has shown this
in Worlds in Collision; you can laugh
at Velikovsky’s explanation but you can’t laugh at its mythological findings,
that you have these things in mythologies of practically every peoples under the
sun, that at this time in history there were fantastic catastrophes. You will see one in Numbers 16; near the
Exodus catastrophe there were a lot of little catastrophes. One of these is recorded for us in Num.
16:31. When they talked about a literal fire burning they talked about a
literal fire burning. In Num. 16:31 we
have one of those famous places, “And it came to pass, as he had finished
speaking all these words, that the ground split open that was under them, [32]
And the earth opened its mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and
all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. [33] They and all
that appertained to them went town alive into sheol, and the earth closed upon
them; and they perished from among the congregation. [34] And all Israel that
was round about them fled at the cry of them; for they said, Lest the earth
swallow us up also. [35] And there came out a fire from the LORD, and consumed
the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.”
What is the fire that came out? I
don’t know what the fire is that came out but it’s a literal fire, it consumed
them. Therefore you have Moses
understanding this as literal; this isn’t poetic language. This literally happened. So don’t just come waltzing through these
Scriptures and say that’s sweet little poetry.
It isn’t, it is to be taken literally.
Another example of this is Psalm 97; in Psalm 97 you have worldwide catastrophe
there. So we can ascertain from history
that at least four times there have been great catastrophes: (1) Exodus; (2)
Joshua, when the sun stood still, the earth shifted on its axis so that
phenomenally the sun appeared to stand still and that’s not just an optical
illusion in Joshua because if you take the mythologies of the western
hemisphere they speak of a long night.
Funny how mythologies vary longitudinally, so we have Joshua with a long
day in the eastern hemisphere, the American Indians reporting a long night in
the western hemisphere; (3) in the days of Isaiah, in the Hezekiah sundial
incident where the sun backed up ten degrees.
That was another case where we had a violation of what appears to be the
normal functioning of the astronomical bodies; these are literal and are not
optical illusions. (4) The Great Tribulation,
described in the book of Revelation.
At least four times in history since the flood we have had worldwide
catastrophes and archeology and geology should, if they are looking at it from
the divine viewpoint framework be interested in finding out more about these
catastrophes that occurred that are testified to, not only in the Bible, but
also in many mythologies. For example,
God, in Deut. 32, fire is kindled, in verse 23 it says “I will heap mischiefs
upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them.”
It’s interesting that when you go into the mythologies of the ancient
world there are several gods in the pantheons of these pagan peoples that is
always associated with fire bolts. Now
you could say they just looked at lightening.
Oh no, they had their storm gods, but these gods were different from a
storm god, these gods were called the gods of the fire bolts, and whatever
these were they were strange things that occurred in history, probably at the
time of the Exodus, and the pagans interpreted them within their own
pantheon. For example, Zeus is the fire
bolt god of the Greeks, Oden for the Icelanders, Uko for the Fins, Perin of the
Russians, Wolton of the Germans, from which we get Wednesday, Mazda of the Persians,
Marduk of the Babylonians and Sheba of the Hindus. In ever case these pagan people have a god
corresponding to what Jehovah is doing right here, verse 23, fire bolts. What these are we don’t know, just the word
fire bolt, that’s all.
Verse 24, if you have a King James you have “they shall be” in italics, italics means that it’s not in the
original and this first phrase of verse 24 is actually a circumstantial clause
and the main clause doesn’t begin until you read down through verse 24 until
you hit “I will also send,” and if you see this structure of the verse the
force will hit you more than just the King James translation. “Burnt with hunger,” or literally, “Dried up
with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction; then I
will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents [or
crawlers] of the dust.” In other words
God has disciplined them in history by hunger, by pestilence, by physical
catastrophes and when they are done then He’s going to send the insects. Do you
remember many of the prophets talking about the locusts, the locust
plagues? Well, those are the same things
of verse 24.
Verse 25, “The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the
young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.” So we have all areas of the population
afflicted by these tremendous catastrophes.
The word “terror within” is used in Exodus 15 for a dreadful
horror. In Exodus 15 we have Pharaoh’s
army moving into the Red Sea situation. These men were soldiers and they were
used to horrible things and yet the Bible says that they were so horrified by
what happened to them in the Red Sea that it struck terror in their heart. This is not the normal word for “terror,”
this means a horrible thing and these soldiers looked at this and they couldn’t
take it, it was just fantastic. This is
the kind of terror that God breathes in these people during history.
Verse 26, “I said, I would scatter them,” now in verse 26 we have the
end of the accusation and the end of the accusation is brought about by a very
of deliberation. In verse 26 it says “I
said I should scatter them into corners, I should make the remembrance of them
to cease from among men.” In other words
God is saying to Himself these people have so fouled up, have so dropped the
ball that legally, as far as my righteousness and justice I should just scatter
them completely, that’s what I should do.
Beginning in verse 27 we have the fantastic grace clause. That’s what He
should do legally but in verse 27 you have it ameliorated by the doctrine of
grace. “Were it not that I feared [or
respected] the wrath of the enemy, lest their [Israel] adversaries should
behave themselves strangely, and les they should say, Our hand is high, and the
LORD has not done all this.” In other
words God is saying that if I really disciplined all of Israel, then the
enemies of Israel are going to turn around and say oh, boy, that God is pretty
weak, look at that. This nation fell
flat on its face and their God was totally unable to help them out. So here you have in the Old Testament the
doctrine of eternal security, and I want to spend a few moments on this because
I want you to see that the great doctrines of Scripture aren’t found in just a
few proof texts. They’re found embedded
in the whole of God’s Word, from one end to the other, and here you have one of
the powerful statements of the doctrine of eternal security in the Old
Testament.
When it came down to a problem of Law and God’s righteousness and
justice would be decree death, would decree destruction of the nation, when
that point was reached, you always have verse 27b, God disciplines so far and
then stops. Why does He stop? Because He
doesn’t want to ruin the testimony of His Work.
If this represents 1440 BC, from here on down to the time of destruction
God has worked with that nation Israel.
He has poured His life and His resources into that nation. If he would destroy that nation from history
it would discredit all of His work. It
would utterly discredit Him. You can get
a sense for this if you visualize a mission, on a mission field some place, for
ears and years the missionaries pour their lives into these people and around
about these people there are unbelieving natives and they ha-ha, they laugh at
them. And then finally saved through divine discipline these Christian natives
go down. What are the pagans going to
say? You see, you’ve ruined the
testimony, God is sensitive to preserving His testimony in history and this is
the basis for the doctrine of eternal security.
Hold the place and turn to Exodus 32 you’ll see how Moses prayed this
prayer once before. When they were at Mt. Sinai, they had broken the covenant,
and in Exodus 32:11, Moses besieges the Lord, the Lord is about to destroy the
nation Israel. In fact, God makes a
wonderful bargain with Moses and he says Moses look, this nation can’t hack it,
and I’ll tell you what I’ll do Moses, I will make another nation just from you,
so why don’t we just do away with these people down here, let the rocks fall on
them and we’ll start all over again. It won’t violate the Abrahamic Covenant
because you’re here, a Jew, so we can start all over again. And Moses says no, one of the great reasons
why Moses is called a man of meekness.
But in verse 11, “And Moses besought the LORD his God,” now I want you
to watch how he prays. At this point Moses doesn’t have a legal foot to stand
on, before God and the Law these people have merited total destruction, just as
we do when we sin against God. So Moses,
as the intercessor, hasn’t got any legal ground to pray, but Moses is shrewd
and he does have one ground to pray on and this is where he plays his trump
card in verse 11, “And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why
does your wrath burn hot against Thy people which You have brought forth out of
the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? [12] Wherefore
should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did He bring them out, to
slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from Thy fierce wrath, and repent of
this evil against Thy people.” Do you
see what Moses’ catch is in the prayer?
Lord, you’re going to blow the whole thing, that’s his pitch. Look, you’ve invested your program, your
time, your effort into this thing and now you’re going to smash it and it’s
going to be all gone; you’re blowing the whole thing and you’ve ruined the
testimony of continuity.
That is the basis for eternal security in the Old Testament. God cannot stop a work that He has started. He will always bring to completion the work
that He has started, the doctrine of eternal security. God is not going to give up on the nation
Israel, He is going to discipline, horribly, in chapter 32 of Deuteronomy we
see this, horrible discipline, but in the end they’re going to come out of it.
Why? Verse 27, to prevent a destruction
of the testimony before the enemies. Our
enemies in the Church Age, of course, are the angelic realm and the
demons.
Verse 28, “For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any
understanding in them. [29] Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this,
that they would consider their latter end!”
In verse 29 there’s a very important verb there, “consider,” it’s a verb
that’s used for looking at your life carefully and coming to conclusions from
what has happened to you personally. The
Bible asks you to look at your life and take all the events in your day, in
your week, and bring them together and consider, is this the work of God or
not.
In verses 30-31 Moses interrupts briefly, and at this time Moses chimes
in, you see, here he’s going on and God is doing all this and God is saying
this and God is saying that and finally it gets to the breaking point and Moses
has to inject his words. So in verse 30
he says, “How should one chase a thousand,” this is military disaster, where
you have small guerilla bands attack large contingents of troops and they drive
them, completely scatter them, “How should one chase a thousand and two put ten
thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them
up?” In other words, these people are idiots, they need disaster after
disaster, and what has God promised them?
He hasn’t promised them disaster, He’s promised them blessing, blessing,
blessing, blessing. And every time they
move they get disaster, disaster, disaster.
And Moses says how dumb can you get, look at your experience here in the
light of the Word of God and put two and two together and get four. In other words, if God promises you blessing
and you’re getting disaster there’s something wrong some place, that’s what he
is saying. And when you see the disaster
of verse 30 it should call to mind some principles.
Verse 31, “For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves
are judges of that.” Now what does Moses
mean by verse 31? He means that even the
non-Israelites know the power of God.
I’d like to take you to some verses where the Gentiles bore witness to
the greatness of Israel’s God, so you’ll see this clearly. The first time this occurs is in Exodus
14:25, I want you to see this because this is the testimony of the enemies;
people always ask how is the Bible proved true.
One of the fastest ways of proving the Bible true is to show that the
people who opposed the program of God testified to the program of God. [Blank
spot] It’s very interesting, the enemies
of Jesus Christ testified to His death and resurrection, not His friends. The same here, the power of the God of the
Old Testament is testified to by whom?
By the non-believers. Look at
Exodus 14:25, “And took off the chariot wheels,” this is the Egyptians, they’re
having problems with their armored divisions at this point, “and they drove
them heavily so that the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel
for Jehovah fights for them against the Egyptians.” That’s a testimony to the power of God from
their enemies.
Turn to Joshua 2:9; you have the testimony of a prostitute, Rahab. I always liked the inclusion of these women;
the two or three women that are mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew are
all Gentile women, one of whom is a prostitute.
The Bible is not condoning prostitution, but the Holy Spirit
deliberately put this in here to smooth over some self-righteous believers that
think they’re so great. And yet it’s
interesting that a prostitute in history, actually she was the mother of Boaz,
and she figures in the line of Jesus Christ.
She was a believer, “And she said unto ht men, I know that the LORD has
given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the
inhabitants of the land faint because oaf you, [10] For we have hard how the
LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and
what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites.” You see, there’s a testimony that the
unbeliever respects, the power of their God.
1 Sam. 4:8, here we have the testimony of a Philistine, I’m showing you
these so you’ll see that the Bible is rooted solidly in historical fact. The Bible doesn’t ask you to psych yourself
up through some system of self-hypnosis.
The Bible asks you to walk around with your mind open and your brain
functioning, looking at history. Here’s
a testimony of the Philistines, “Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us out of the
hand of these mighty gods?” That should be God, that’s the name Elohim, “These
are the gods that smote the Egyptians which all the plagues in the wilderness,”
the Philistines are pagan people and they interpreted Israel, Jehovah, as many
gods. But notice the testimony, there
are the gods that smote the Egyptians, with all the plagues in the
wilderness. Do you see this, the
testimony of the Exodus historically?
1 Sam. 5:7, some more of the Philistines testifying to the power of God,
“And when the men of Ashdod saw that it as so, they said, the ark of the God of
Israel shall not abide with us; for His hand is heaven upon us, and upon Dagon
our god.” Now isn’t that amusing? In other words, here they openly say that the
God of Israel is over their God. He’s
given them a bloody nose, in other words.
Israel’s God is greater than their god.
Now this is a testimony of enemies; what do you do with this, people who
say that the Bible is just a lot of fairy stories? This is history; you can’t erase history just
because you don’t like it. You can’t
just drop it down in a basket and just ignore it, these are historical facts
upon which we base our faith.
Deut. 32:32, we come now to the most powerful section of this song. This
song builds to a climax. I wish some
Christian that had musical ability would take this song and work with it; it’s
got fantastic potential. Verse 32, this
is why the judgment has come upon Israel, “For their vine is the vine of Sodom,
and the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are
bitter.” Why this usage? Because the vine is the symbol of
productivity and Israel’s production spiritually is as the production of Sodom
and Gomorrah—nothing! In that day, after
the disaster of Sodom and Gomorrah the fields were so saturated with salt and
natural deposits caused by the explosion, the destruction of the pentapolis in
Gen. 14, that the crops wouldn’t grow in the land, and so the whole land was
just one big disaster area. So he says
their production is just about like that of a disaster area. “…their clusters are bitter, [33] Their wine
is as the poison of sea monsters, [serpents],” don’t know what to do with this
word in verse 33, the word “dragon” here is a word that means dragon and this
is not to be pawned off as some insect and not to be pawned off as some
fish. There is in the Bible testimony to
the existence in the time of mankind of mysterious dragon-like creatures, they
existed in the ocean, you can read of them in Job, etc. They apparently no longer exist, they may be
remnants left over from the antediluvian animal kingdom. But whatever tanniym are they evidently had some sort of poisonous type of
killing, etc.
“…and the cruel venom of asps. [34] Is not this laid up in store with
me, and sealed up among my treasures? [35] To Me belongs vengeance,” and
beginning with verse 35 the words of God are directed against two people, up to
now it’s been directed against Israel but now God is treading a very thin line. It’s like the words are going in two
directions; over here they’re going to Israel and over here they’re going to
the Gentiles. Remember the Gentiles are God’s paddle that he uses to spank His
child; the paddle that He uses are the Gentiles. But, there’s always a danger that in the
process the Gentiles will say well, look what God has given to me, I have such
fantastic power over Israel, I can just go ahead and use all the power I want
to. So right here beginning in verse 35
God is warning both the Jews and the Gentiles.
Verse 35, “To Me belongs vengeance,” emphasis “to Me,” in other words, I
am the one that disciplines, principle applied to believers, if God disciplines
someone else you let Him do it, don’t you do it. Funny how every once in a while we have
believers that seemed called of the Lord to discipline other believers. The fastest way of getting a spanking is
getting between the rear end of someone that’s getting paddled and the paddle,
because that means that you are going to get paddled, and that’s exactly what’s
going to happen if you but into someone else’s business. When God is disciplining some other person,
and you stick your nose in there it’s going to get clobbered and that’s what
God is warning you of in verse 35, you let Him take care of the
discipline. “To Me belongs vengeance,”
that is quoted by Paul in Rom. 12:19.
“To Me belongs vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due
time,” this is a premonition of immediate judgment, “the day oaf their calamity
is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”
Verse 36, “For the LORD shall judge His people, and repent Himself for
His servants when He sees that their power is gone, and there is not shut up or
left. In verse 36 you have the principle
of discipline. God disciplines a person
or a nation until a point X is reached; that point X is the point at which it
is clear to the perception of those people that they don’t have it and can’t
hack it by themselves any longer. When you are out of fellowship, God will keep
after you until one of three things happen, (1) He will spank you until you
recognize that you have fallen short and must get back in the bottom circle by
1 John 1:9. (2) He can discipline me and
discipline me until I realize that I have to trust in the promises, this is a
learning type of non-moral type discipline.
(3) He can discipline and discipline and maybe I’m a slow learner and
the sin unto death takes me out of this world, as he did to the Corinthians in
1 Cor. 11. So God will always discipline
until point X is reached, that point X is when you will admit and break down
your pride and realize that you can’t do it yourself; when He gets you in that
position the discipline stops. This is
what has to happen here, as he says in verse 36, I will change My mind when I
see that they see that they have no power.
This is what will happen to you if you are a believer and you’ve trusted
in things, you’re not going to succeed, God is going to make sure you don’t succeed. And every time you reach for something it’s
going to turn to dust, and it’s going to keep on turning to dust until you get
straightened out as to the will of God for your life. So here we have this thing repeated and
repeated again, that God will discipline up to a point.
Verses 37-38 is what He says to them at that point, in other words, the
picture of a father disciplining his son, and he disciplines him up to this
point. In verse 37, “And he shall say,
Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted,” in other words, do you believe
now that I am the only God, do you really believe it or are you still going to
trust in your own human gimmicks, going to try to plug up the program of grace
with human works. [38] “Who did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the
wine of their drink offerings?” Verse 38 is some more sarcasm, He says look at
these gods Israel, take a good look at them, you sacrifice and spent literally
thousands and thousands of dollars.
Remember sacrifices weren’t cheap in the ancient world, it took money to
worship gods and these people would spend thousands and thousands of dollars on
sacrifices and God say ha-ha, where’s your money now? In other words, you put all this money into
these idols, where are they, they don’t seem to be helping you too much now,
what’s the trouble Israel? They “drank
the wine of your drink offerings, let them rise up and help you, and be your
protection.” In other words, as God puts
the pressure on them historically He says where are all these gods you’ve been
trusting in Israel, what’s the matter with them.
1 Kings 18: and we will examine another situation that led to the same
principle, that when God disciplines He disciplines up to a point and He will
continue disciplining up to a point, and then He’ll make fun of the things that
you’ve trusted in; maybe it’s money, maybe it’s personality, maybe it’s
something in your business, some friend, it’s as though God stands there and he
mocks you to your face, why do you trust in that? 1 Kings 18, the Elijah incident; Elijah
called together all of these people that were worshiping Baal. In verse 21, “And Elijah came unto all the
people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the LORD be God,
follow Him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.” The first thing you want to notice about
verse 21, it’s something that you encounter again and again in the Word of God,
the honesty of the authors. Do you remember Paul, if Christianity isn’t true,
then draw the logical conclusion, go out and raise hell, go out and eat, drink
and be merry, draw the logical conclusion, have the guts, if Christianity isn’t
true, to go all the way but don’t sit there like bumps on a log. Go one way or the other way, that’s the authors
of the New Testament and they are willing to do that. Paul was willing to say if Jesus Christ’s
body were discovered tomorrow I’d go out and I’d eat, drink and be merry, for
that’s the only logical conclusion. You’re absolutely foolish to sit there and
say oh, I’d live a moral and ethical life whether Christianity is true or
not. Nonsense, absolute nonsense, what
good would it do, you’re living a lie.
So this is the same thing that Elijah’s saying, look, if Baal is lord,
go off and follow him, that’s what he’s saying, you decide one way or the
other, and have the guts to go with your decision. If Baal is god, then go ahead. Verse 23, “Let them, therefore give us two
bullocks; and let them chose one bullock for themselves,” notice that this goes
on, this is all facts, these people aren’t gathered around on a trip some place
smoking their marijuana or something else, this is isn’t in the head some
place, this is in history. This goes on,
verse 24, “And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of
the LORD, had the God who answers by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, it is
well spoken. [25] And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one
bullock for yourself,” and he set the experiment up, and now in verse 27, a
beautiful scene here, “And it came to pass at noon….”
You have to catch the humor of it in verse 26, here you have all these
prophets, 400 to 1 odds, 400 prophets of Baal to one man, Elijah. And they’re calling, “O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was
made. [27] And it came to pass at noon
that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god. Either his is
talking or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or, perhaps, he sleeps and
must be awakened.” That’s sarcasm;
Elijah says why don’t you yell a little louder, maybe your god’s asleep, why
don’t you wake him up. This is not being
cruel when it’s done with the right attitude.
You, as a believer in Jesus Christ have the right to make fun of the unbeliever
when you do it as unto the Lord. There
is a time and a place to ridicule the unbeliever, just like Elijah does here, a
time to say ha-ha, where’s your god now; a time to say ha-ha, where are the
things that you trusted in? There is a
time and a place for this and it has a tremendous and vital bearing in
evangelism.
The Elijah incident shows sarcasm, the Elijah incident shows the same
thing, that God will discipline up to a point and then after the choice is
made, after these people realize that no support exists on their pagan gods,
then He cuts it off, and Elijah was the tool of God, Elijah forced these people
out to the logical conclusion and the logical conclusion was does your God work
in your life or not, and if He doesn’t work, just forget it, you’re wasting
time, an absolute waste of time.
Back to Deut. 32; verses 39-43 are a doxology to the omnipotence of
God. “See now that I, even I alone am
He, and there is no god with me,” these are fantastic, powerful verses, “I kill
and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver
out of My hand.” The phrase in verse 40,
“For I life up My hand to heaven, and say, I live forever,” this was the way in
the ancient world of swearing. When an
oath was made a man would raise his hand to heaven and say “as I live,” or “as
Jehovah lives,” and that’s what God is doing here in verse 40, He is
swearing. He is swearing that He and he
alone is God.
In verses 41-42 He’s pictured as a soldier, as a warrior, He says “If I
whet My glittering sword, “if I sharpen it, “and mine hand takes hold on
judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, and will reward them who hate
Me.” This is a very bloody, very gory,
and a very masculine type of God that’s pictured here. I want you to see this, because in the book
of Revelation chapter 19, Jesus Christ appears in this role, that gentle Jesus,
meek and mild, he’s always pictured in the Sunday School literature holding a
lamb, He’s not holding a lamb in Rev. 19, He’s holding a sword, and His clothes
are spattered with blood of battle. This
is the God of the Bible, the God who is righteous and just, and this is why He
says, and warns the nations in verse 42 that I slay, that before Me there is
absolute righteousness, God is sovereign, righteous, just, love, omniscience,
omnipresence, omnipotence, immutability and eternality. These are the attributes of God’s essence.
Two of these attributes form holiness, righteousness and justice, and that is
where the issue is.
For you and for me, verses 41-42 are saying that God has absolute
standards, and the question we ask, do you have an absolute right and wrong or
do you have a pragmatic right and wrong. The test is, do you live your life in
front of men, in front of society, in front of psychological principles and
say such and such is right because it’s nice to do in front of other people;
such and such is nice to do because I was taught to do that when I was little;
such and such is nice to do because it’s the custom of our community. If you live that way you have a pragmatic
reality that is unbiblical. In the Bible
you live your life as unto the Lord. And
this means that you do what He tells you to do independent of society;
righteous standards of Him and Him alone.
That’s verses 41-42, God is warning both the nations in that day and the
nations in our day and you as a believer that he has absolute standards that
are absolutely inviolable.
Verse 43, “Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people; for He will avenge
the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and
will be merciful unto His land, and to His people,” the culmination of the
program of God.
Now we have to answer one final question before we finish this
song. How in the end do you match the
righteousness and justice of God with His love; how do you dissolve the
dilemma. There’s been a tension here and
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed it, but all during this thing He said I
punish sin, but in the end He says it’s going to turn out for the nation, for those
who believe. How is this resolved? It goes back to these four attributes, God is
these attributes: God is righteous and just, you have to see this. I’m convinced one reason why we have poor
evangelism, we haven’t communicated God’s righteousness and justice. And therefore people have a pragmatic
morality and you tell them you’re a sinner and you fall short of the glory of
God and immediately what goes to that person’s mind, oh yes, I’ve wronged other
people. That’s wrong, you don’t sin against people, it’s impossible to sin
against people. You sin only against
God. You commit wrong against people,
but the word “sin” is only against God, it’s vertical not horizontal.
Now, having said that, that God has absolute standards, how are we going
to resolve the tension between love and this, between law and grace? That’s the tension that this passage
resolves. The resolution is given in the New Testament. The resolution is in the cross of Jesus
Christ, where righteousness and justice are poured out; sins of the nation
Israel are put upon Jesus Christ, by Jer. 31 and the doctrine of the New
Covenant. All the sins of the nation,
and your sins, my sins, were put there on the cross, and they were judged
there. This is where God’s righteousness
and justice were fulfilled. When God forgives in the Bible He never forgives at
the expense of this; if you go out on the street and ask somebody, do you
believe God forgives sin? What goes
through the mind of the person that you’re talking to, usually, is oh yeah,
after while God gives up His standards and relents. That’s not true, God never relents His
standards. If God relents the pressure
of His holiness He’s destroyed Himself.
God never, never relents; God never backs off a thousandth of an inch
from His judgment. What you saw here was
the “whet and glittering sword,” what you saw here was the gore and the blood
of God’s judgment, it’s never, never removed by grace.
What happens in grace is that it’s shifted but it’s not removed. God’s judgment was shifted from you to Jesus
Christ but the judgment still occurred, that’s the point. The judgment is still there. When Christ died
and when He was screaming out Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me,” the pain that Christ was experiencing wasn’t physical, all these pictures
about Christ bleeding to death, Christ’s pain wasn’t physical at that point,
Christ’s pain was spiritual and when Jesus Christ refused the Roman soldier who
came up to Him with this long swab, actually it had a narcotic on it, the
Romans used to do this to prevent the pain from people who were being
crucified. Usually if you died you died
quickly but Jesus Christ wasn’t dying so this soldier got this narcotic and put
it up there and said here, do you want to have some. And Jesus says no, I’m not going to have
any. Now the reason why Jesus Christ
said no to the Roman soldier was that Jesus Christ had to remain mentally
alert, He wasn’t going to take any trips on the cross; He wasn’t going to fog
out His mind so he couldn’t think. Jesus
Christ, all the time that He bore your sins and mine on the cross had to
think. Why did He have to think? He had to be claiming the promises of Psalm
22, constantly, over and over in His mind, He had the Word of God and you can’t
claim the Word of God when you’re drugged.
This is why Jesus Christ refused the Roman soldier that gave Him this
thing on a stick, which we really don’t know what it was, it says vinegar; it
wasn’t vinegar, it was some other kind of preparations they used to anesthetize
people to decrease the pain. But Jesus
Christ refused because He loved you, because He bore your sins on His body on
the cross.
That is how you dissolve the dilemma of grace. Don’t cheapen grace because you drop out the
Law. Hold the two in tension, as this passage does. God never, never relents His justice but He
comes in by another solution, the cross, but the solution does not negate His
righteousness and his justice. Christ
bore it for you; He got what you should have gotten, what I should have
gotten. But the justice was passed out,
that’s the point. When we resolve Law
and grace, as we shall see next time, with the end and the death of Moses, for
Moses, a few moments after he gives this sermon is going to die. Moses is going to drop dead and he’s going to
have one of the most unusual funerals that any man ever had. Moses actually dropped dead in perfect
health. Moses’ body was in excellent
shape, even though this man was far older than any man in this congregation, he
was strong, he had full command of his faculties, yet Moses at this point
dropped dead because of the sin unto death.
Moses himself had committed the sin that forced the exclusion from the
land and therefore he had a most unique funeral.
Next week we are going to finish this book.