Exile (Part 6)

Last Time, We Looked at the Children of Israel as They Lived as Exiles in the Wilderness

We are Now Fast-Forwarding to Israel in the Promised Land

But Before We Do, I Want to Read a Lengthy Chapter From Deuteronomy

In Chapter 28, Moses is Pronouncing Blessings and Curses Upon Israel…

According to How They Live in the Promised Land

If They are Faithful, Blessings will Come

If They are Unfaithful, Curses will Come

Among Those Curses is Their Exile to Foreign Lands

Deuteronomy 28 (NLT)

1 “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. 2 You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God:

3 Your towns and your fields will be blessed. 4 Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed. 5 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. 6 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed.

7 “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! 8 “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.

9 “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. 10 Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you.

11 “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. 12 The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them.

13 If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. 14 You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

15 “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:

16 Your towns and your fields will be cursed. 17 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. 18 Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. 19 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.

20 “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. 21 The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die.

23 The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. 24 The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.

25 “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.

27 “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. 29 You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.

30 “You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you. 32 You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them.

33 A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment. 34 You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you. 35 The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.

36 “The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone! 37 You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you.

38 “You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops. 39 You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. 40 You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. 41 You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity. 42 Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.

43 “The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker. 44 They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!

45 “If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed. 46 These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever. 47 If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, 48 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.

49 “The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. 51 Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death. 52 They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.

53 “The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you. 54 The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. 55 He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.

56 The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter. 57 She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.

58 “If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick. 60 He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. 61 The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed. 62 Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God.

63 “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. 64 For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone!

65 There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. 66 Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.

67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. 68 Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”

Faithfulness will Lead to Immeasurable Blessings in the Promised Land

Unfaithfulness will Lead to Unimaginable Curses and Exile From the Promised Land

Unfortunately We See Many of These Curses Come Upon Unfaithful Israel

After They Enter the Promised Land:

Joshua and the Israelites Begin to Conquer the Canaanite People and Inhabit the Land

But it Didn’t Take Long for the Israelite People to Stop Driving Out the Canaanite People…

And Decide to Live Amongst Them Instead

After Joshua’s Death We Read:

Judges 2:10 (NASB95)

10 All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.

The People Began to Turn From God

This is the Time of the Judges:

One of the Darkest Time Periods in Israel’s History

But Even During this Dark Time Period, We See a Story of Redemption From Exile

Ruth Chose to Join Her Mother-In-Law in a Land that was Not Her Home

She Lived the Life of a Foreigner Until Boaz Redeemed Her

At the End of Both Judges and Ruth…

We are Given Hints that Point to a Coming King

Ruth’s Lineage Leads to a Man Named David

And Judges End with These Words:

Judges 21:25 (NASB95)

25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Israel’s Final Judge Would Be Samuel

After Him the People Desired a King Like the Other Nations

This Leads to King Saul

But, Over Time, Saul Turns Out Not to Be the Best Man for the Job

He Proves Time and Again to Not Listen to God

This Leads to David Being Chosen and Anointed By God to Be the Next King

David was Good and Faithful, and Saul was Jealous

Over Time, this Leads to David having to Flee From King Saul

David was Forced to Live as an Exile

During that Time He Remained Faithful to God…

And Continuously Helped Those in Need

Years After He Took the Throne…

He would have to Flee From His Son Absalom…

And Live on the Run Again

One Thing that Seems to Be True of David is:

He was More Faithful as an Exile Than as a King

I Think We can Learn an Important Lesson From that

Faithfulness Comes Easier…

When We are Detached From the Riches, Power, and Luxuries of the World

Jesus Said it was Extremely Difficult for the Rich to Enter the Kingdom

We are Rich, So this is Something We Need to Think Seriously About

Paul Told Timothy that We Ought to Be Content with Just What We Need

Desire for More Leads to Destruction

1 Timothy 6:8–11 (NASB95)

8 If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. 9 But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 11 But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.

Do We Take Paul’s Advice Seriously?

Do We Flee From the Love of Money and the Desire for More?

I Think American Followers of Jesus Really Need…

To Think Long and Hard About this

What is Our Relationship to Our Money/Possessions?

And How Does it Need to Change for the Glory of Jesus?

We Must Be Willing to Make Drastic/Extreme Changes…

If Necessary for Our Relationship with Jesus

Most, if Not All of Us are Already Rich By Global Standards

What Does Paul have to Say to Us?

1 Timothy 6:17–19 (NASB95)

17 Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. 18 Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.

We Must Make Sure We aren’t Trusting in Our Riches, But in Jesus

And We Must Be Generous with What We have

This will Ensure Great Riches for the Age to Come

Exiles Don’t Live in Luxury and Self-Indulgence

If We are Truly Exiles, Waiting for Our True Home to Come…

Then We Shouldn’t Be Living in Luxury and Self-Indulgence

Our Mission isn’t to Gain and/or Hoard Riches

Our Mission is to Pursue:

Righteousness

Godliness

Faith

Love

Perseverance

Gentleness

And to Be Generous with What We have

Elijah Lived as an Exile

Judah was exiled east to Babylon

Talk about what it is like to live as an exile

(Jeremiah 29:4-20)

Live your life in this life

God will one day return us to our home

And He will punish those who didn’t live in exile with us

One of the difficult parts of living as an exile is having to live differently than those around us

“Being in the world but not of the world”

Talk about some of the beliefs/standards of our culture and how we must react to these things:

Relationships in a culture where 50% of marriages end in divorce

Fornication & Adultery

LGBTQ

Abortion

Pornography

Are there some things that we have turned into major issues that aren’t?

Dancing

We are Even Exiles in Our Own Body

2 Cor 5:1-10

We Currently Live in a Tent (Temporary Housing)

We Look Forward to Living in a Building (Permanent Home)

When Jesus Returns, We will Inherit a Home Prepared for Us that has Been Stored Up in Heaven

Joshua 24:13 (NASB95)

13 ‘I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you have lived in them; you are eating of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.’