THROUGH THE BIBLE - Deuteron..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. We're going to be reading together. I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible, Germany, Chapter seven.

And what we're going to be really together here is just a divine expectation. The Lord expects that the people of Israel, when they cross the Jordan and when they make it into the promised land, he expects that the people of Israel will destroy the Canaanites. utterly destroyed the Canaanites. That as they were taking possession of the land, the divine expectation is that everything will be utterly destroyed and consecrated to the Lord. We're going to be reading the details of that divine expectation here in Deuteronomy chapter 7.

So beloved of Christ, paying attention to each one of the words, and by faith, and in the Spirit, trying to glorify the Lord. As we read and as we think about these words, let's read together Deuteronomy chapter 7. I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible. This is the word of the Lord. Deuteronomy chapter 7.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gergashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you. And when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them. given your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons.

For they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thou, child, you deal with them. You shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars, and chop down their ashram, and burn their carved images with fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.

The Lord, your God, has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them.

He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I commend you today. Verse 12, and because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. He will love you, bless you, and multiply you.

He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. And the Lord will take away from you all sickness and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew will he inflict on you, that he will lay them on all who hate you. And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you.

Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. But if you say in your heart, These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to Egypt, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.

Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among them until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. You shall not be in dread of them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beast grow too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed.

And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, or take it for yourselves, lest you be snared by it. But it is an abomination to the Lord your God.

And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it. you shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction. And this is the word of the Lord. Dear brother, sister, dear friend, whoever is within the sound of my voice, the Spirit of God, through the Apostle Paul, gives a very important practical direction to the people of the new covenant in Philippians chapter two. He calls us to do everything looking to our brothers and sisters as superior to us.

He says, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but with lowliness of mind, count others before you as better than you, and look out not only for your own interests, but for the interest of others. The Spirit of God through the Apostle expects that not only the Philippians, but every single Christian throughout the ages, your soul, my soul, that we will come to the realization that in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are to see ourselves as inferior and not superior to our brothers and sisters. That is called humility. that which is completely different to our nature, that which is opposed to what we desire. We desire to be heard.

We desire to be followed. We desire to be the first. We desire to be the person that is right. Yet the Spirit of God by the Apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 2 calls us to be humble and to consider ourselves less than our brothers and our sisters. How is your soul?

How is my soul? going to bring this divine expectation to a realization? How am I going to bring those words of Philippians chapter two to be a reality in my heart? How am I not going to decide to be exalted before you, but rather to give my life in sacrifice for the sake of your edification in Christ? The apostle answers that question in verse five of the same chapter saying, let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

who being in the form of God did not consider robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave, a servant in the likeness of men, and being obedient even to the point of death. The God of this universe, the one who is exalted above all, has given us the greatest of the examples of humility, that he did not only humble himself, becoming like a man like us, but he was a slave, a servant. One who died, and not only died, but died at death of the cross. As a criminal, the one who had it all, now he was humble, and the apostle through the spirit says that a Christian is to be humble as the Lord Jesus Christ. What is the humility of this Lord Jesus Christ of ours?

Well, that he being God decided to die and to die upon the cross. Now when he had all the rights not to go upon the cross, he said, Father, not my will, but your will be done. Father, if it's your will that this cup of your wrath pass from me, that that might be, but your will be done and not my will. the God of this universe, the beloved of the Father, a righteous man without sin, beloved of Jesus Christ, was humbled in that he was obedient even to the point of death, submitting, surrendering himself, submitting himself to the will of the Father. He knew that the wrath of God was going to be poured upon him upon that cross.

He knew that he was going to be forsaken by the one whom he loved. He knew that all the sins of the church were going to be imputed there to him, and he was going to nail them to the cross. And he knew the cost of being upon that cross yet. He said, not my will, but your will be done. He humbled himself.

And the question that we need to ask is why would the Lord Jesus Christ humble himself to the will of the father who was going to pour his wrath upon him upon that cross? The answer is given to us in the Psalms. You will not let your Holy One in Sheol, and your Holy One will see no corruption. That is that the Lord Jesus Christ, even though his desire was that the wrath will not come upon him, he said, knitted himself in desire with the Father that that will actually take place because he entrusted himself to the faithfulness of the Father who had said even before he was born, that He was going to be powerfully and majestically vindicated. The Messiah was not going to die.

The wrath of God was gonna come upon Him, yes, but on the third day, Jesus Christ was going to be powerfully resurrected, vindicated by the power of the Spirit, and all the story of the history of redemption was going to come to an end by Him going up to the throne of heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, and becoming the King of kings. Jesus Christ humbled himself to the will of the Father because he was 100% sure, completely confirmed of the faithfulness of God as a covenant keeper, the one who had promised before the ages began an eternal life through the death and resurrection of the Lord. He entrusted himself because of the faithfulness of this God. and that faithfulness, beloved of Jesus Christ. manifested to the Son upon that very moment.

The faithfulness of God the Father that was given in the covenant, in the new covenant to Jesus Christ is the same faithfulness that the Lord God of Israel manifested and gave to the people of Israel through the wilderness and through the history of Israel, and more importantly here in this chapter seven that we have in front of us. Verse nine says very clearly, know therefore that The Lord your God is God. The faithful God who keeps the covenant in the steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments. The glorious faithfulness of God, beloved of Jesus Christ. The faithfulness that was manifested to Christ in that particular moment is the same faithfulness that was manifested to the people of Israel.

A faithfulness that according to what we have read was manifested initially in the fact that the Lord remembered the oath that he had given to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and because he had given that promise and he was faithful He remembered when the people of Israel cried out when they were in the bondage. He was faithful in keeping the promise that he had given to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. The glorious faithfulness of God was not only manifested in that he remembered that promise and that he kept that promise, but that he took them through the wilderness, not destroying them because He had given an oath that He was going to take these people out of Egypt into, I promise, man, and the faithfulness of God, as sure as His word was going to come to be fulfilled. The same faithfulness is manifested not only in the coming out of Egypt, but also that He has chosen these people. He says, not because you were numerous or mighty, but rather you were despised and the least of all the nations.

The faithfulness of God manifested in keeping his promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He chose this nation. And not only that, but he says, I set my love upon you because of the glorious faithfulness of God. And because of the faithfulness of God, dear brother, dear sister, the Lord asked that the people of Israel will, when they enter into the promised land, destroy all the nations that are a warning or that are a threat against the holiness of the people of Israel. Because of the glorious covenantal faithfulness of God to the people people of Israel, he expects that the people, when they make it into the promised land, they will utterly destroy those nations not chosen by God, but rather that are pagan and contrary to the covenants of God, so that the faithfulness of God will continue to be manifested in the people of Israel, destroying the Canaanites.

Israel, an instrument of judgment in the hands of God, a judgment that has been given in Genesis chapter 9, to Canaan, you will be a servant to your brothers after the sin committed against Noah. Now Israel, executing the judgment in the hands of the Lord, you are to utterly destroy them because of the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord. brother, sister, dear friend, that is the glorious attribute of this God that we serve. That was the faithfulness of God there manifested to Israel, but when we come to the New Testament, it says in 2 Timothy, that when we are faithless, he remains faithful, and he cannot deny himself glorious virtue of this God, apart from the faithfulness of our God in Jesus Christ, he will not be able not to pour his judgment upon us, but he says, when you are faithless, but apart from Christ, that is all the time, when you are faithless, I remain faithful. Why?

Because I cannot deny myself the faithfulness of the Lord, corresponding and in alignment with His character, undeniable. And now we are the recipients of this glorious faithfulness of the Lord that has united us to Christ and that now has given us this promise that we, as the people of Israel, were chosen, we have been chosen from the nation. as they were selected and loved, we have been loved in the person of Jesus Christ, as they were holy. Now, once we were not a people, but now we are a people chosen to proclaim the excellences of the Lord Jesus Christ because of the faithfulness of this glorious God. But just beloved, as this faithfulness is so majestic and is so glorious, and it should give to our souls peace, because when we think about the faithfulness of God, we have to think about God as the rock, as the Redeemer, as the one who does not change, the one who there's no variance or shadow of turning.

He's a rock, the Redeemer. We can be safe and secure in the faithfulness of God, who cannot deny himself. and the soul of the believer is to be in awe of the faithfulness and the strength of that promise of our Savior that He will not be unfaithful to us. But at the same time, brother, sister, and dear friend, this faithfulness of God, which was the same for Jesus Christ there when He was interceding before the Father about the future of the cross, and this faithfulness of God, which is for the believers of the new covenant as it is manifested a fearful thing. The same faithfulness that can be of rest and peace and safety for the soul of a person is a fearful and terrifying thing.

You see, how can be the faithfulness of God terrifying and fearful and at the same time glorious for us and of peace and of comfort for our souls. is contingent upon perfect love and obedience. God is not going to be faithful if those who are recipients of their faithfulness are not perfectly loving towards Him and obedient. That is what the text says there in verse 9. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations.

He is faithful and loving to those who love him and keep his commandments, verse 10. And he repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them. He will not be slapped with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. You, therefore covenant people of Israel, in verse 11, you shall therefore be careful to do the commandments and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.

Why? Because the covenantal faithfulness of God for the people of Israel depended entirely on their love and the keeping of the commandments to him. Terrifying thing, because if the Lord is going to break his faithfulness because of the disobedience and the lack of love of those who are members of the covenant, then that faithfulness that is sweet and peaceful is transformed in wrath. and in judgment and in anger, divine anger. And that is exactly what is going to happen to the people of Israel, chosen from the nations because the Lord loved them, gave them the covenant and everything that they needed yet.

because they did not love the Lord, and because they did not keep the commandments perfectly. These nations, that they are not going to be able to utterly destroy it in the land of Canaan, are going to become the instrument by which, including the hidden, that the judgment of God will come upon them, and the covenant will be broken, because this covenant is contingent upon the obedience of the person. Terrifying thing, O my dear soul, that you depend on your obedience and your performance to receive the favor of God. What a terrifying thing will be for your soul that at this very hour, as you hear this preacher preach, that your soul depends on your own obedience and your own love towards the Lord to receive the favor and the faithfulness in the covenant of God. Because apart from one name, the name that is above every name, the one who humbled himself in order to fulfill the requirements of this covenant that we cannot keep, apart from this Lord Jesus Christ of ours.

we are all faulty when it comes to loving the Lord and keeping the commandments. That is the glory of the new covenant, that yes, the faithfulness of God is contingent upon perfect love and obedience, but the obedience and the love of Jesus Christ towards the Father, so that by grace and through faith, once inserted in Christ, we are the recipients of the love and the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. because he is the one that is altogether lovely, and he is the one that is faithful to all the requirements of the Father, and he is the one that has in his heart and in his mind and in his being love perfect and commandments of obedience perfect to this Father, so that when the Father sees us, he can say, I do not deny myself, and my faithfulness is always great. It is that faithfulness we're seeing in the church Great is thy faithfulness, not because of our obedience or not because of our love, but because one, his name is Jesus Christ, and he reigns in heaven. Amen.