Deuteronomy chapter 14. I want
us to read the first two verses in Deuteronomy chapter 14. We
looked at this last week. I want to look at it from just
a little bit different angle this week once more. Deuteronomy chapter 14. Let's
read verses 1 and 2. Ye are the children of the Lord
your God. You are the children. You shall
not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes
for the dead. For thou art an unholy people
unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a
peculiar people unto himself above all the nations that are
upon the earth." I was looking at this and considering this,
And he makes mention of these three things here. You are the
children of the Lord your God. And then there in verse 2, you
are holy. You are a holy people. And then
he says in the last portion there that the Lord hath chosen thee
to be a peculiar people to himself above all the nations of the
earth. And I thought about these things are God's prerogatives. And that means these are things
that He does Himself for us and to us and concerning us. His
prerogative. His rights that nobody else has
and can do. And as I meditated on this, I
thought, what an awesome thing that we open up His Bible and
we find such statements like this. And as I was reading it,
I thought I wanted to read this passage to you. over in Isaiah
66. You don't have to turn there.
Just let me read it to you. I thought of this passage today
as I was thinking upon this. The Lord said, Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you build
unto me? Where is the place of my rest?
For all those things has my hand made, and all those things have
been, saith the Lord. But to this man will I look,
even to him that is poor of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word."
And I thought, as I noticed these three things that we want to
look at this evening again, I thought, boy, these are awesome things.
These are solemn things that is God's prerogative and according
to His sovereign will and His Word. And sometimes you open
the Bible and don't you just tremble? You tremble with joy,
but you tremble before Him. You tremble because of who He
is and because of what He's written. And I thought this evening this
when I remembered God has these prerogatives, these rights that
belong to Him. And the Bible says that He works
all things after the counsel of His own will. and that He
is free to choose whom He will, whom He pleases. And I tell you,
these are humbling thoughts, aren't they? These are humbling
thoughts. They break us. They bring us
down into dust before Him, and we tremble and find that we have
to look outside of ourselves to Him for mercy and for salvation
and for grace. And I want you to think again
on these three things And this is what I'm talking about being
God's prerogative and God's work. And why these three things here
are so humbling. Why are you and I children of
God? Why are you a child of God? If
you are this evening, why are you a child of God? You know,
when we're born naturally, our fathers had to beget us, didn't
they? When we are born into this world,
naturally, our fathers had to beget us. And when you were born,
think of this now. Stay with me on this. What power
or what will of your own did you exert to be born? No, did
you? I mean, it would be silly to
think of it, wouldn't it? To say, well, I conceived myself
and by my own will I bore myself out of the womb. It would be
silly to ask that. to say that. We don't have anything to do
with our natural birth. Now, that's amazing, but we don't.
And there is some comparison between our natural birth and
our new birth. I don't know very much about
the new birth. I used to think I knew a lot about the new birth.
I really did. When the Lord saved me, I began
to study, and I thought, man, I've got this all figured out.
Then after a while, I realized I know so little. about the new
birth. But I know this about the new
birth. This is what I do know about the new birth. It's God's
work. It's God's work. It's done by
His power, and it's by His will. Now, I know that about it. Of
His own will, begot He us with the Word of Truth. The will of
God. Isn't that a wonderful thing to think? You're a child of God
by new birth, And that's according to His blessed will. Let me read
John 1, verse 12 to you again. As many as received Him, to them
gave He power to become the sons of God, even to those who believed
on His name. And listen to this. Which were
born, not of blood. That means we're not born spiritually
through the bloodlines of our dad. Your dad or your mother
may be a believer, but that doesn't make you one, does it? That doesn't
save you for them to be. It's not of blood. It's not of
the will of the flesh. Whatever the flesh wills to do
or don't do, that has nothing to do with a new birth. Not of
will of the flesh, nor of man. It's not by my will that I can
begot you. But God. But God. Not of blood, nor the will of
man, nor the will of flesh, but of the will of God. My dad, if it wasn't for my dad,
and if it wasn't for your dad, you wouldn't have a physical
being. You was born into the kingdom of this world because
your dad begot you physically. And it's the same way spiritually. You and I would have no spiritual
being except God the Father hath begotten us again. We could never
get into the kingdom of heaven except God begets us through
a new birth. So it's His will, isn't it? His
prerogative is power. Don't that make you tremble somewhat?
Tremble with joy, but it makes you tremble. Before you and I know anything
about our privileges and our responsibilities, we must first
be children. That's what he's teaching the
children of Israel. You must first be children. It's the children's
privilege and holy responsibility to seek in everything the will
and approval of their Father. But you must first be a child. He is speaking here to the children.
He says, you are not to make any baldness between your eyes,
or you are not to cut yourself. Why not? The heathen did it. They were going into the land,
and can't you see some ignorant Jew coming up, or some teenager
that's got a little bit of rebellion about him and said, Dad, why
can't we do it? They do it. Look at the Canaanites. Look at their faces, how they're
scarred. When they have somebody die, they cut themselves. Why
can't we do it? Well, the simple answer, son,
is this. Here's the difference between
you and them. You are a child of the Lord your
God, and they're not. You do it because your Father
says not to do it. It's simple as that, isn't it? You go into the land of Canaan,
probably down in Egypt, and you see these people, their faces
scarred up, their eyebrows shaved off, and scars on their face
where they've been wailing and showing their emotions that's
got away from them, and cutting themselves and mutilating themselves.
Look at the difference in them and the children of Israel. The
children of Israel didn't have a scratch on their face. And
what was the grounds for them doing and living and acting the
way they did? They were children. That's the
difference, isn't it? We're children. And we hear people
say today, well, what's wrong with this? Or what's wrong with
that? Or why can't we do this? Everybody else does it. Here's
the difference if you're a child of God. Your Father in heaven
has begotten you by His power, according to His will, and you're
to be different. You're to live different. You're
to think different. You're to believe different.
Why? Because He's your Father, and
He's given you His Word to live by. Now, that's reason enough,
isn't it? That's reason enough. You're
different. And here's the difference. Here's
the grounds that makes the difference. You are children of the Lord
your God. That's the way we conduct ourselves.
Look at the second thing here, he says, and we looked at this
last week, but let's look at it from this angle. He says this
in verse 2. Here's another reason they were
to conduct themselves. For thou art an unholy people
unto the Lord, Your God. Now notice how the Holy Spirit
says this. He didn't say make yourself a
holy people. Did you ever wonder how you'd
go about making yourself holy? I say I tried that for quite
a while during my teenage years. You can ask my wife how miserable
I was trying to make myself holy. Martin Luther tried that. Bless
his heart in the 1500's. He joined the monastery. fasted
himself half to death, slept on cold floors naked, mutilated
himself trying to make himself holy. But did you notice how
the Holy Spirit says this here? For thou art an holy people unto
the Lord your God. You are holy. You do this because
you are holy. Be ye holy because He's holy,
but we can't be holy until He makes us holy. It goes back to
this I tell you so often. You can't live a Christian life
until God makes you a Christian. We get the cart before the horse,
don't we? We go downstream to clear up
the muddy water when you've got to go to the fountainhead. He
makes us holy. When the children of Israel down
there in Egypt And it was the children of Israel that had the
blood, wasn't it? That separated them. That blood separated them from
everybody else. It saved the firstborn. Their
enemies were drowned in the Red Sea. What does that tell us?
God separated them Himself by the blood, by drowning their
enemies. He separates you and He separates me. And here's the
way He begins. He puts us in Christ. He puts
us in Christ. And then He says, if any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature. He's a new creation. Now, who
can create anything? All you and I create is a bunch
of trouble, isn't it? A bunch of problems. Only God
can create. And what does He create? A new
creature. He puts a new nature in us. We're
setting out to have an inner man. Ephesians 4 tells us that
this inner man is created in righteousness and true holiness. God gives us a new heart, a new
spirit. He purges us of the conscience
from dead works. He makes us new. He makes us
holy within. He puts a holy principle within. And then He says, now, be holy. I've made you holy. Just be what
I've made you. Just live like I've made you.
Don't you wish sometimes I just want to cry this out? Do what
you want to do. What do you want to do? Search
your heart of hearts, your inner man, and see what you really
want to do. And if the Lord's made you new,
you know what you want to do? You want to follow Him, don't
you? Don't you wish you could be done with sin forever? Don't you wish you could never
sin again? This struggle that you're having,
don't you wish that was over? Don't you wish you was on Canaan's
barren, happy coast? Where sin and sense molested
you no more? Don't you wish you could love
Him with all your being? I wish I was perfect. Don't you
wish that? Don't you want to be good? Oh, I'd love to be good. I mean good from the inside out.
You just want to be good. Why do we think that? Why do
we want to be these things? He's put a holy principle within
your heart. And He says, now since I've made
you these things, now you seek these things. And you live this
way because of what I've made you. One of the worst things
we ever try to do is try to make ourselves holy. Don't we do that
though? Still today, don't we try to
make ourselves accepted to God? We're already accepted if we're
in Christ. Perfectly accepted. If He's made you holy, if He's
made you new, if He's separated you to Himself, then be what
you are. Be what you are. I feel for some people, bless
their hearts, they're always trying to make excuses. You don't
see them for six months and you see them, I'm coming to church,
preacher. I'm coming to church. And they have no heart for it,
do they? And I've told them, I said, listen, man, stop promising
me this. I know where you are. You don't
have a heart. You need a new heart. That's
your trouble. You don't pray. I'll tell you
what your trouble is. You need a heart. You don't love
to take His Word and open it up and read it. I'll tell you
what your problem is. He needs to make canoe. He needs
to be born again of the Word. If you're that, then you have
the desire for the sincerity and miracle of the Word. But
it starts with who? With Him. With Him. We can't a bit more beget ourselves
and make ourselves children than we can jump over the moon. We
can't make ourselves holy. This is God's work. It's His
will. It's His power that does it.
Thirdly, let's look at this for just a second. Here's God's prerogative. Here's His sovereign will. His
discriminating grace or whatever you'd want to call it. But here
in verse 2, again, look at this. Thou art an unholy people unto
the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar
people unto himself above all the nations that are upon the
face of the earth. Now, we see some things here.
First of all, look here at the grace. The Lord hath chosen thee. Wasn't that grace? The Lord hath
chosen thee. He didn't have to choose anybody,
did He? This is His prerogative. His sovereign prerogative. It's
grace that He chose anybody. And to think that He chose a
number that no man can number, that's super abounding grace. That's like taking a little teaspoon
of water out to the ocean and think you've got something until
you face that ocean. Boy, that's grace. There's grace.
I ain't got any grace, but there's grace. And for him to choose
his grace, but for him to choose a number that no man can number.
Oh, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. But look
at his purpose in this choosing. He has chosen you to be a peculiar
people unto Himself." That's His purpose, isn't it? Why did
He choose these people? To be a people unto Himself?
He chose them for Himself, for His glory, to magnify His grace
and His mercy, to sing His praises, to tell what wonderful things
He's done for them. The Lord chose you? That's why
He chose you. To show forth the praises of
His grace. That's His purpose. To make you
holy. Notice the discriminating aspect
of this. Boy, this is something here.
Above all the nations that are upon the face of the earth. That's what we call discrimination. God is a discriminating God. He chose you above all the nations. He could have chosen mightier
nations than these couldn't. I mean, this was the smallest
nation of all the nations. And they were slaves. And let's
be honest about it. The Lord knew them. He said,
you're a stiff-necked and rebellious group of people. But He chose
them. He chose them. That's grace, God's purpose of
grace, and His discriminating grace. And notice how he says
this too, He hath chosen. He hath chosen. The choice was
His, and He had already made it. He had already made His choice. He hath chosen you. If He had
not already chosen them, what could they have done to entice
Him to choose them? What could they have possibly
did to entice the living God? to choose them. I told Joe, I've
got to tell this. My wife was eating this afternoon.
If I can keep this without breaking up, it's so funny. This is where we were eating.
This fellow walked in and he looked like this cartoon character
that I've got in my office. I've got a little piece of paper
and on the piece of paper, the heading of it says, the princess
chooses a prince. And it's this beautiful princess
with her gown on and a crown on her head. And she's going
to choose a prince out of these people. And these men are lined
up there in front of her. She's looking at them. She's
got all kinds of people to choose from. I saw this fellow come
in down there. He looks just like this little
character that's in this cartoon. And there's a doctor. The doctor's standing there and
she's looking at him. And there's even an astronaut in his astronaut
suit. professor that's got his little
bow tie on, somebody that's rich, you can tell he's rich and a
famous person, got a cowboy with his hat over his heart, and right
in the middle of those people stands this little guy, he looks
like he's about 5 foot 3 or 4. He's got a big pot belly, he's
hanging over his belt with his blue jeans and a shirt, a t-shirt
on, bald headed, looks like he's eating a hot dog or something
had been, and he spilled some ketchup on his t-shirt. And he's
saying, choose me, choose me. And the fact, what made it all
look so ridiculous, and him look so ridiculous, that he's drawing
all this attention to himself. Choose me, choose me. And I thought
of this, I thought of that as I was reading this. If the Lord has not already chosen
you to salvation in Christ, if He has not already chosen me
to salvation, what could we possibly do? What could we say to entice
Him to choose us now? We'd be like that little pot-bellied,
bald-headed fellow, wouldn't we? What could we offer Him? What could we say to Him? You
know, it's a humbling thing, ain't it? It is a humbling thing
to think that God has done made His choice. But I tell you, when you can
believe, when He makes you to know you're one of His, oh my
goodness. That He chose you before you
had a being. He did it because of His grace.
You had nothing to do with it. If He'd have looked at you, all
He'd have saw was what I saw in that silly little man. And
He had rejected you, but it wasn't according to anything you could
do, or ever did, or He foresaw you doing. It was His own purpose. Discriminating purpose and grace. Isn't that wonderful? Oh, it's
humbling, boy, to kick the prophets out in 91. It will kick the prophets
out in 91. I tell you, it will make you
tremble. It will make a person get on
his face before the Lord. and say, God, be merciful to
me. I've got nothing to offer. Hide
what I am. Clothe me. Save me by your grace. We used to sing an old song.
We don't sing it anymore. We learn better. There's a new
name written down in glory. We used to sing that old song.
And I don't condemn anybody for singing that, but it's just not
true, is it? Revelation 17-8, their names were written in the
Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world. Who
wrote those names down? God did. This is God's prerogative. Rights that belong to Him only. Let's finish with this, and I've
tried to purpose not to keep you over 30 minutes tonight.
Here in Deuteronomy, let's finish with this. Here in Deuteronomy
chapter 14, and he says here in the last
part of verse 1, You are the children of the Lord your God,
therefore in the light of all these things you are to be different.
You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness between
your eyes for the dead. This is important because there
are still some things going on today that people do for the
dead. And He forbids that, doesn't
He? He forbids doing anything for
the dead. Before we get to what we should
do for the dead, let's get here just a minute to what God doesn't
permit us to do for the dead. First of all, He doesn't permit
us to pray for the dead, does He? We hear somebody say, especially
among Catholicism, I went in and said a prayer for my dead
mother. Where do we find that in the
Scripture? We don't do it. A prayer for my mother, or your
mother, or my dad, or your dad is useless. It's vain. And I wouldn't say that to offend
anybody, to hurt anybody, but let's just be honest and blunt
about it. My dear mother died in 1970,
and my dear mother is with the Lord in glory, or she's in the
torments of hell. Now, that's plain, and I don't
want to be hurtful, but that's the truth, isn't it? And my prayers
for her is not going to affect anything. If the Lord had instructed
me to pray for the dead, then I'd do so. But we don't do that
for the dead. There are some things that He
forbids doing, and that's one of them. Secondly is this, giving
money or gifts for the dead. Have you ever heard this old
phrase? They used it back when they were
building St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. They sent out men to
collect money. And if you give money, you would
get your loved one out of the purgatory. When the coin in the
copper rings, a soul from purgatory springs. Have you ever heard
that? That's what they said, wasn't
it? Is that true? Are we to do that
for the dead? No. When a man leaves this life,
that's the end. As far as doing anything at all
for that man to decide whether he's going to heaven or to torment.
Luther used to say he thought it was a strange thing that the
Pope always said you could get sold out of purgatory by giving
money to the church. He said, why not give it to the
poor? He said, wouldn't that be better? I think that would
be better if that do any good, don't you? Thirdly, don't be baptized for
the dead. That's what the Mormons did.
And once in a while, they keep all these genealogies. And if
you go back a century or two, you've got a great-great-grandfather
that you found out that he died and wasn't baptized, you can
be baptized for him. Baptizing for the dead. We have
no Scripture for that. One that seems to indicate that,
but that's not what it means at all in 1 Corinthians 15. Don't be baptized for the dead. Fourthly, don't seek to communicate
for the dead. I heard a fellow say one time,
he said, many people have got dead relatives. That's wanting
to communicate with them. Of course, he was a medium. That's
why he stirred up business, you know. You've got a dead relative. And your dead relative is wanting
to communicate to you. And I can do it for him. There's
only one place in the New Testament, I know for sure, that the dead
ever wanted to communicate. And that's where the rich man
in hell said, Would you send somebody to my five brothers?
and tell them not to come to this place of torment. We don't
communicate with the dead. We don't try to stir up the dead
spirits and speak to them and communicate. We just don't do
that. God forbids that. And lastly is this. Think about
this. We don't overly sorrow for the dead. You can leave that
and turn to 1 Thessalonians. Look in 1 Thessalonians chapter
4. I imagine all of us have loved ones that we've lost. And I'm
not saying that we don't have sorrow. We have dear loved ones. We miss them, especially when
they first die. We miss them. And I'm not saying
that we don't have a mount of sorrow in our hearts. But we
don't despair. Over in 1 Thessalonians 1288
in the Pew Bible, we don't despair, do we? I think even Martha and Mary
almost went over the line about this weeping and sorrowing over
somebody, because it was three days later. Remember that? And
the Lord Jesus went to them. They were still weeping over
their brother. They almost reached the point
where I think the Lord was ready just about to stop them and tell
them. He told Martha, don't you believe
in the resurrection? But Lord, I know my brother is
going to raise again at the last day. Then why are you so tore
up? Why are you despairing as if
he had no hope? A fellow invited me over to his
house. He was from Egypt. And he showed me these films
where some people come in and kill some of his relatives. I
never in my life heard such wailing. You'd think there's the point
of ready to start cutting themselves. If we believe that our Our dead
loved one has fallen asleep in the Lord Jesus Christ. If we
despair because we've lost them, we're almost to the point of
denying the blessed hope we have in Christ. If my dear mother
died in Christ, I rejoice to think about that. John Mitchell,
bless his heart, he's been sick now. He's been bed fast for a
year. He can't even hardly talk anymore.
I am going to rejoice when that man dies. Blessed old saint,
the preacher of the gospel, I am going to rejoice. And his congregation
is going to rejoice when he dies. And here is why. Look at 1 Thessalonians
chapter 4. And look at verse 13. I would
not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep.
1 Thessalonians 4 verse 13. That you saw it or not, even
as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, if He died for our sins and rose again for
our justification, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the
word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the
coming of the Lord shall not go ahead, we shall not prevent
them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with
the trump of God." And look at this, here is your dead loved
one that died in Christ, and the dead in Christ shall rise
first. Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore,
comfort one another with these words." Comforting isn't. We don't need to despair when
we've lost a loved one in Christ. I'd say it hurts us when we lose
a loved one that is not in Christ. What should we do for the dead?
Well, there's one thing we do for the dead. Just one thing
we do for the dead. Remember what Abraham did when
Sarah died? We studied that. Remember that?
The first burial that we have recorded in the Word of God?
Abraham buried Sarah out of his sight. He dressed her up. They probably washed her body.
Put her, I imagine, in some kind of a container. Probably filled
her coffin full of sweet smell and myrrh. And laid her out of
their sight. That's what we do, isn't it?
That's what we do. This country that you and I live
in respects the dead. Probably more than any other
country. I was in a country south of here one time. And a missionary
took me to the cemetery. and skulls and human bones laying
everywhere. Some of them brought there by
their loved ones in bags and just poured out. Dogs have dug
some of them up. Why is that? A respect, a lack
of it, for life, isn't it? The sanctity of life. That's
what that is. We're not like that in our country,
and I thank God for it. When you and I lose a loved one,
What's our obligation and responsibility? To respect that body and put
it in the grave. But that's all we do. That's
it, isn't it? That is it. They are gone. Get on with your life. If they're
in Christ, you've got a good hope. Bless God for it. And if
they're not, you'll have to get on with it. You can't change
it. All your weeping and anything
else you do, change it. And that's what the Lord meant
when He said, I don't want you to shave your heads and cut your
eyebrows and your faces for the dead. You bury them. Commit them
to Me.