Deuteronomy 7, and last week
we looked in verses 1 through 8, and we begin there in verse
1 when the Lord reminds them that He is bringing them to the
land. When you, when the Lord your God shall bring thee into
the land where you go to possess it. And we remember that it had
now been almost 500 years since the Lord spoke to Abraham and
promised him and swore to him, I am going to give you I'm going
to give your descendants the land of Canaan. And here they
are. Here they are now on the board
and ready to go in and possess this land. Almost 500 years,
though. I mean, that's a long time, isn't
it? This country hasn't been standing that long. 500 years since the promise.
You know, sometimes the Lord's promises are slow in being fulfilled. A lot of people come and a lot
of people go, but I tell you this much. Every promise he has
ever made has been fulfilled. And every promise he will ever
make will be fulfilled. Listen here to what Solomon said,
Blessed be the Lord that hath given rest unto his people Israel,
according to all that he promised, there hath not failed one word
of all his good promise that he promised. Not one word, not
one word that he promised ever failed. Sodom would look back
over the children of Israel, the promises that God made to
Abraham, how they were all fulfilled. They conquered the land of Canaan.
And he said, Boy, looking back now, I see it. Not one word failed
of all that the Lord had promised. You and I, like Abraham, we look
to the Lord's promise. And we, like Abraham, have to
be patient. We have to continue in the faith
and endure. But like Abraham, we will obtain
the promise. If your faith is in the Lord,
if your hope is in His promises, then you will obtain the promises. In chapter 7, verses 2 through
5, we looked at the Lord's commandments concerning the wicked. These
seven nations, the Lord told them to utterly destroy every
man, woman, boy, girl, and child in these seven nations. Destroy them all. And not only
to destroy them, but he tells us there in verse 5, they were
to destroy their idols, break down their altars, grind their
images to powder, and cut down their groves. All the means that
they used to worship their God, destroy them. Destroy them. We looked at that. And in verse
6, during the first part of verse 6, he gave the reason for their
obedience, because he said, For thou art an unholy people unto
the Lord. They were different people. And the Lord had made them different.
He had redeemed them from the house of bondage. They had been
living off a heavenly manna. They had been drinking water
out of that rock. They had been seeing the glory
of God in the cloud of the day and the pillow of fire at night.
They were a different people. They were a Lord's people. He
made them different. Therefore, He said, you keep
My commandments. You destroy the wicked and you
break down their altar. And in the last part of verse
6, the Lord tells us why they were
His people. In the last part of verse 6,
He said, The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people
unto Himself, above all the people that are upon the face of the
earth. The Lord had chose them to be
a special people. We said last week somebody will
often look at us when we say we're one of God's elect and
they'll say, well, you think you're special. Yes, that's what
he said. You're a special people. A special
people. Why did he choose them? Well,
he tells them in verse 7 that it wasn't because they were more
significant They were the less significant, not because you
were more than number, but because you were the least of all the
nations. That's why I've chosen you. The
reason's not found in them, but verse 8, the reason is found
in God. Verse 8, because the Lord loves
you. That's it. Nobody can find any
fault with God's electing people to be saved, can they? Because
it's out of His love. That's why it is. I've loved
you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I chose you. Therefore,
I redeemed you. Therefore, I called you. I drew
you. And therefore, I washed you.
He loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood. And
who shall separate us from the love of God that's in Christ
Jesus the Lord? Our entire salvation is owing
to the love of God. Because I loved you. Because
I loved you. And he says here in the last
part of verse 8, Because he would keep the oath which he hath sworn
unto your fathers, which he swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
hath the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand, and
redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, even from the hand
of Pharaoh king of Egypt. He hath brought you out with
a mighty hand. Because He swore He was going
to do it. He promised that He would do it. You know there is
no power that the Lord will not exert. It is mighty power. And there is no price that He
would refuse to pay, even the blood of His Son, to deliver
His chosen people from their sins and bring them to faith
and obedience and to heaven at last. There's nothing He won't
do. There's no power that He won't
expend and no price that He won't pay. A mighty hand and redeeming
love that brought you out. That's what we looked at last
week. Now, here in verse 9, look what He says. Here in verse 9.
Know therefore that the Lord thy God is God. the faithful
God which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him,
and keep his commandments to a thousand generations." Now
look what he is saying here in verse 9. Know therefore, realize
this, live in the faith and knowledge and assurance of it, that the
Lord thy God, He is God. The one that chose you, the one
that redeemed you, the one that delivered you from bondage, He
is the Lord thy God. Ain't it wonderful when the Lord
describes Himself in His Word and then turns right around and
says, Now this is your God. This is your God. I'm your God. This is the kind of God I am.
And I'm your God. Thy God. The only God. It's wonderful
when you can find the God that you profess in the Bible. It's
a sad thing when you go to the Bible and say, I can't find my
God here. What kind of God do we have? He identifies Himself. He's this mighty God. He's this
God of love. He's this covenant God. He's
the God that has redeemed His people and will deliver them
with a mighty hand because He loves them. This is God. This
is the God of the Bible. Here's who the God of the Bible
is. Here's what He's like in His
eternal attributes. Here's what He's done. Here's
what He's doing. Here's what He's promised. And
this God is our God. The Lord wants His people to
know Him. Do you know that? He wants us to know Him. He wants
us to know Him better. That's why He talks so much about
Himself in His Word. He wants us to increase in the
knowledge of Him. Because as we do that, what happens? We trust Him more, don't we?
We trust Him when we know how faithful He is. We trust Him.
We love Him more when we know Him better. We admire Him more
when we know Him better. We stand in adoration of Him.
when we know Him better. Listen to what Peter said. Grace
and peace be multiplied unto you. Grace and peace be multiplied. Wouldn't you love to live in
a deeper tranquility in your soul? When all around you seems
to be out of control, wouldn't you love to just spend your days
and your nights in peace? Well, he said grace and peace
be multiplied to you, to your heart, to your mind. How? through
the knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul was
writing to the Colossian church. He said, I desire that you might
be filled with the knowledge of His will and all wisdom and
spiritual understanding, that you might walk worthy of the
Lord and well-pleasing to Him, being fruitful in every good
work and increasing in the knowledge of God. And what kind of God
is He? Well, here He describes Himself,
doesn't He? He's this electing God, this redeeming God, this
God that delivers His people with a mighty hand. He's God. And as we read in the Bible and
find out who He's like, what He's like in His eternal attributes,
when we see what He's done and what He's doing and what He's
promised to do, we can say, as God instructed them, Therefore,
the Lord thy God, He is God. He's God. Israel had some long, hard battles
to fight, and they needed to know this. They needed to know
what their God was like. They needed to know who He was.
Look here in chapter 7, and look in verse Here is why
they needed to know Him. Look back up in verse 16. And thou shalt consume all the
people, those wicked nations, which the Lord your God shall
deliver thee. Thine eye shall not pity, have
no pity upon them, neither shalt thou serve their gods, for that
will be a snare unto thee. If thou shalt say in your heart,
These nations are more than I, How can I depossess them? Then
thou shalt not be afraid of them, but shalt well remember what
the Lord your God did unto Pharaoh and unto all Egypt. The great
temptations which your eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders,
and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby the
Lord your God brought you out, so shall the Lord your God do
unto all the people of whom thou art afraid. Moreover, the Lord
your God will send a hornet among them, until they that are left
and hide themselves from thee be destroyed. Thou shalt not
be affrighted at them, for the Lord thy God is among you a mighty
God and awesome." He's terrible. They thought they'd come up with
a new word a few years ago, the young people did. Then when they
started using awesome, that's what this word is. He's awesome.
He's awesome. Why did they need to know this?
They were going to have some battles to fight, Glenn. They
were going to get seven nations mightier and more than number
than they were. And they were going to be overwhelmed
with fear if they did not know who their God was, what He was
like, and what He had promised. And that's why He describes Himself
to them. He said, I'm your covenant God. I've redeemed you out of
the house of bondage. I'm a faithful God. You'll need
to know this. You'll need to know this when
you're facing those Canaanites. And listen, brothers and sisters,
you and I have a lot of enemies, too. We face trials. We face temptations. We face
this world. We face the weakness of our flesh,
sin, lust. We face it all the time, don't
we? We need to know who our God is. We need to know how mighty
He is, and we need to know how faithful He is. Notice something else about Israel's
God. Look back over here in verse
10. This is very interesting. Verse 9, we're told that He keeps
covenant and mercy to those that love Him and keep His commandments. And then in verse 10, look what
He says. And He repays them that hate Him to their face. to destroy
them. He will not be slack to him that
hateth him. He will repay him to his face."
Now, what do we have here? We have a discriminating God,
don't we? To those that love Him and keep
His commandments, He's going to show mercy. He's going to
reveal His promises to them, His covenant. But what about
those that hate Him? He's going to deal with them
too. He discriminates between these two. He says, you know,
therefore, thy God, He's a faithful God, a covenant keeping God to
those who love Him, but those that hate Him, He's going to
repay them to their face. He's a discriminating God. He
always has made a difference between the righteous and the
wicked. He always has and He always will. And you know something, this
is something the world hates. The world hates this. When you
tell them, when somebody says, God has a church in this world,
and He calls them the righteous, and they love Him, and they obey
His commandments, they love His gospel, they follow Him, And
God's going to bless them with the blessings of heaven. And everybody outside this church,
these purchased people, are wicked people. And the Lord is going
to deal with them in judgment, and He's going to destroy them.
What happens when we make those statements? Well, who does He
think He is? Who is the Lord that I should
obey Him? Who is the Lord that He can tell
me what to believe and what to think and what to do? And who
are you anyway to think that you're different or you're better
than I am? It makes them mad, doesn't it? You see them on the
TV shows all the time. They'll be interviewing. Usually
they find the weakest, the weakest religious person they can find.
And they throw all these questions at him, and here he stands so
intimidated and confused he don't know how to answer. Instead of
just reading this Bible and answering according to the Scriptures,
they just hee-haw around about it and can't give them answers
because some of them are afraid to. I'll tell you what, this modern
church age that you and I live in, here's what they tell the
world. They've been trying to remove
this distinction between the church and the world for the
last 30 or 40 years that I know of personally. And what they
go around telling everybody is this. Listen. God loves you as
much as He loves anybody. And God has a wonderful plan
for your life. And He wants to have this relationship
with you. And He wants to see you at your
best. Listen to this, brothers and
sisters. and let this sink down deep into our hearts. Say you
to the righteous, it shall be well with him. He shall eat the
fruit of his doings. But say you to the wicked, you
say something else to him. There is one message to the wicked
and another message to the righteous. There always has been. Say to
the righteous, it will be well with him. That's my promise.
But don't you tell the wicked that. Don't you tell those who
harden their hearts against me that. Don't tell those that who
test my word behind their back and trample under feet the Son
of God. Don't tell them that. Here's
what you say to them. Woe be to the wicked. He shall receive the works of
His hands." That's a distinction, isn't it? God has made that distinction
between the righteous and the wicked. The Bible says He put
a difference between Israel and Egypt. He puts a difference between
His blood-brought church and the wicked today. And on the
Day of Judgment, He'll put a distinction between them. He'll say to those
on His right hand, Come, you righteous, inherit this kingdom. But He'll say to those on His
left hand, Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity. He's made precious promises to
those who love Him. But to those who hate Him, He
said, I will repay them to their face. He's a discriminating God. And notice this, somebody's going
to say, you hear the wicked saying this all the time, that's not my God. Anybody ever
told you that? That's not my God. As a matter
of fact, I hate that God. I had a young friend of mine
tell his dad one time, he said, I hate your God. I hate your
God." And his dad called me and was tore up about it. I said,
listen, that don't surprise me. He just told you the truth. He
hates this God. Bruce, there are just a very
few people that hate God. Well, he says right here, I'll
repay them to their face that hate me. And the Lord Jesus said,
there's no middle ground here. There's no straddling the fence.
If you're not with me, You're against me. The carnal mind hates
God. It's at enmity. That word means
it's hostile toward you. It don't surprise us that the
world hates God, does it? And boy, sometimes this world
gets bold, don't it? Christopher Hitchenson died.
He was one of the three horsemen, one of the great atheists of
our day, and I heard his wife Somebody wanted to know if he
thought about the Lord in his dying moments. And she said,
for those who wanted to know if he died an atheist, she said
he died speaking to his friends and not one word was brought
up about God. He died like he lived, in defiance. He professed not only an atheistic
view of God, that there is no God, but he professed a hatred
against the God of Christianity. And I tell you, sometimes he
was so buggled, he would get so bold, man, he'd make a mortal
tremble just to hear how he talked about God sometimes. But you
know something? People may say things and get
awful bold when they're healthy and young and strong, but listen,
it may scare us. But we're not very hard to intimidate,
are we? I saw a person yesterday laughing
at me. I didn't tell him about it, but
he was laughing at me while I was preaching. And you know what
that did? My heart just sunk. We can't
help it, can we? We can be intimidated so easy
by the sneers and the snares and the laughter and the boldness
and the words of this world. Sometimes it makes us afraid.
But listen, God is not intimidated with the wicked. He's not. He says, Bud, I'm going
to face you down. I'm going to bring you right
up here in all your boldness, all your bragging about how you
don't believe in God, all your hard speeches. I'm going to stand
you right here in front of me, and I'm going to look you right
in the eye when I pronounce your judgment. I'm not afraid of you. I'll repay you to your face.
Ain't that what he said? I'll stir you down. You'll be
the one to blink. You made people blink, but when
you stand before Me, you'll be the one blinking. You'll be the
one bowing your head in shame and trembling, because I'm going
to repay you right to your face. You see, the Lord is going to
manifest all this. He makes these great promises
to His people. He tells them, I'm a covenant
God. I promised you. I've chosen you. I've told you
this and I've called you and I've purged away all your sins. I promised you I'll never leave
you or forsake you. I promise you my glorious kingdom
at last. And someday He's going to look
at us, as I said yesterday, and He's going to say, I told you.
I told you. He's going to make His people
know That He was a covenant God, a faithful God. That what He
had promised them, now He's given them. And boy, they're going
to know it. They're going to know it. And I tell you what
He's going to do with the wicked. He's going to make them know
it, too. He sent warnings to them. He sent instructions to
them. He was good to them. He warned
them about what was coming. They trampled His Word. They
cast it behind His back. They spoke evil of Him. And He's
going to make them know someday, when they stand right before
Him, He's going to tell them right to their face. Right to
their face. He's going to tell them everything.
And I'm telling you, He won't be intimidated when He does.
I'll repay Him to His face. I stood before a judge one time.
In all my life, I stood before a judge. And when he started talking to
me, he never took his eye off of me. He never took his eye
off of me. Mr. Crabtree, do you realize,
sir? Mr. Crabtree, do you know, sir?
But I never made a statement. I would have been afraid to say
a thing. I was afraid to even look away.
He told me to my face. He sized me up. And that's what
God will do, ain't it? So let people go on and rap and
rave and curse and take His holy name in vain. Hard speeches. Oh, this gospel you folks believe
it's out of hell. This is of the devil. You bunch
of deceived cultish people. Go ahead and say that, but I'd
be careful. I'd be careful, because God will repay you to
your face. Now, in the light of that, and
we'll close with verse 11 through verse 13, look at this. He tells
us, He's always going through you and saying, therefore, this
is who I am, therefore, keep my word, keep my commandment.
And he says in verse 11, Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments,
because I am a discriminated God, because I am the kind of
God that I am, therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes
and the judgments which I command thee this day to do them. Wherefore
it shall come to pass, if you hearken to these judgments, and
keep unto them, that the Lord your God shall keep unto thee
the covenant and the mercy which ye swore unto your fathers. And
He will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee. He will
bless the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your land, your
corn, and your wine, and on and on He goes, telling how He's
going to bless them. And He says, I'll love you. I'll
love you. What does He mean by that? He
already loved them, didn't He? He said He did. He's not going
to love them because of what they're doing. So he can't mean,
I'm going to love you when I see what you're doing. What does
he mean by that? He means this, I'm going to manifest
my love to you. As you walk in the course of
your duty, as you keep my word and walk with me and fight my
battles and suffer, here's why I'm going to reveal my love to
you. I want you to look at that over and you can leave number
7 and look over in John chapter 14, and we'll read this in closing. John chapter 14, and look in
verse 15. The Lord is manifesting His love
to those people, to His people, as they obey His voice, as they
honestly and sincerely seek His face, as they walk with Him in
close communion, It's the same way with our children. You that
have children, you that have grandchildren, you know how this
is. Don't you deal differently with your children? You have
a child that obeys you, and you tell them to do something one
time, and buddy, when you come home, it's done. They just obey
you. They respect you, and they show
it by what they do. How do you treat that child?
Don't you reward that child? Your whole attitude is different
towards that child as opposed to the one that you just have
to keep on them all the time to get them to do anything. Sometimes
you lay the belt to them and you have to threaten them. Does
the Lord have any children like that? Well, I'll leave it to
everybody's conscience to judge that. But you deal with them
different, don't you? That child that you have so much
trouble with, he gets a lot of your friends, doesn't he? Boy,
you take that wand that is tender and obedient to Him. You manifest more of yourself
to Him. You come home and the other work
is done and boy, you put your arm around Him and say, Son,
oh Son, bless your heart. The Lord is the same way. Look
what He says in John 14. Look in verse 15. If you love
Me, keep My commandment. Find out what they are and keep
them. I tell you two of them, that we should believe in His
Son and love one another. That's two of them, isn't it?
That's two of them. And I will pray the Father and
He'll give you another comforter. This is the coming of the Holy
Spirit. And He'll abide with you forever. Even the Spirit
of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him
not, neither knoweth Him, but you know Him. For He dwells with
you now and He shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans
comfortless. I will come to you. Yet a little
while, and the world seeth me no more, but you shall see me,
because I live, you shall live also." And look at this. At that
day, you shall know. In that day, you're going to
recognize something. It's going to be so evident.
What? I am in my Father, and you are
in me, and I am in you. You are going to know about this
union that you have with Me and My Father. He that hath My commandments
and keepeth them, he it is that loves Me, and he that loves Me
shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will
reveal, I will manifest Myself to him. See that? He that hath
My commandments. He that keeps My Word. He that
walks with Me. He that diligently follows Me,
I'm going to love Him. I'm going to make Him know I
love Him. I'm going to reveal Myself to Him. And Judas said
unto Him, not Iscariot, the other Judas, Lord, how is it that You'll
manifest Yourself to us and not unto the world? And Jesus answered
and said unto him, If a man love Me, he'll keep My words. And My Father will love him,
and We will come unto him and make Our abode with him. And I bet you there was times
when those children of Israel went out to fight those battles.
Maybe 5,000 of them got together, and they're going to take this
big track of land. They topped the hill, and boy,
there stood 25,000 of the enemy down there in the valley waiting
on them. Waiting on them. What are they going to do now?
What are they going to do now? We can't go up that much. We'd
better turn tail and run. But the Lord said we could. The
Lord said He'd be with us. His mighty hand was with us.
So how are we going to prove Him? Get your sword out. Hold it up towards the enemy
and say, charge. And right in the thick of the
battle is where you'll feel His energy in your arm. It's where
you'll feel the strength of the Lord in your body. as they fall
before Him. You'll feel His mighty power.
And that's the way we do it as we live our lives. Live as close
to Him as you can. Bear the cross and come after
Him. Whatever He says, do it. Wherever
He says, go. Follow Him fully and there's
when you will experience His love and His union with you and
yours with Him. There's where you'll know Him
as you've never known Him before. in his mighty saving strength. If a man loves me, if a man loves
me, he'll depend on me, he'll follow me, and I'll manifest
myself to him. God bless his word.