Chosen for Flourishing

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If you would please open your Bibles with me to the seventh chapter in the book of Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy is the last book in the first section of the Bible. This book is largely structured around a series of five sermons Moses gave to the people of Israel just before they were about to enter the promised land. The title Deuteronomy comes from the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. It translates to “second law.” This is because just a few chapters ago, Moses reiterated the Ten Commandments to the people as a reminder of what God requires of his people.

Deut 7:1-16

Prayer:

Blessed Lord, you have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning—grant us that we may in such a way hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

A Word to the Kiddos;

As we have made a transition to adding a Sunday School hour at Midtown now, we have the joy and privilege of having our children in the worship service with us. I have to say I feel honored to have you sit among us. Jesus was very fond of little children and wanted them to also sit by him and hear what he had to say. I am going to ask something of you today. While I am talking, I want you to listen for the word “chosen“. Whenever you hear me say “chosen“ I want you to squeeze your Mom or Dad’s leg right next to you. At the end of the sermon, I want you to come up and tell me how many times you heard me say “chosen. “ The main point I want you to understand as I give this sermon is that God chose you to become a Christian because he loves you.

Intro

This morning we are going to cover a two controversial topics. That is the doctrine of election and God-ordained Holy War. Election is a theme that you see all through the Bible. In both the New and Old testaments, Gos said he chose a few out of the many for a purpose. The next is about God-sanctioned war that at the first sound, might makes our skin crawl because we can’t believe a God of love would call for something like that. I acknowledge and recognize that not everyone in this room is in the same place when it comes to these topics. Some of you may have studied and come firmly down on a position, and others may have avoided the topics all together because they were too weighty to engage with, and there are probably a lot in the middle still figuring things out. I completely understand, and wherever you land this morning, I want to invite you to listen with ears to hear. I truly believe that these topics will prove to be good news and leave you worshipping God.

Mains Points

This is a text that is jammed packed with good news and I think Moses very wisely crafted this narrative to show what being chosen means. So this morning, I want to talk about true worship, a holy people, and the blessings of Eden.

True Worship

The text first opens up with a promise from the Lord, Moses says “When the Lord your God brings you into the land” Let's just stop and look at that first word when. God here is not making some condition for Israel, He is not saying if you enter the land and you work really hard then I will give you this place I’ve promised you. No, God says when I bring you in, and I clear away the nations before you.

When we think of Holy War, hearing that God has told a group of people to utterly destroy some other group of people, we often think of people just using their God to justify war crimes. It is really easy to go in and decimate others if you have a on your side. So is this just Israel giving a justification for their war, saying that God told them to?

When God chose the people of Israel all the way back in Genesis 12, he did so for the blessings of the world. God told Abraham long ago that in his family, all of the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. God has been working with humanity to redeem them to himself. God wants to be in a relationship with people. It’s very important to remember that.

So what we read here is not the justification for conquering but the justice for sin that has invaded the world. God is not driving out the people in the promised land because Israel was so worthy to be praised and worthier still to receive an abundant land. If you have your Bible with you, please just turn a page or two over and read with me in Deuteronomy 9:4-5 “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

If this were a text justifying the religious war, would this be the kind of rhetoric we would hear? Would Moses be telling the people that they weren’t righteous? No, what we would expect is Moses hyping up Israel, telling them to be strong and brave, go in, and conquer because they deserve the land! That is not what we read, though; what we do read is that it isn’t because of Israel’s righteousness but because of the nation's wickedness. That surrounding nations were practicing child sacrifices, practicing extremely brutal means of torture and killing. The surrounding nations were not peaceful people living in a land. But neither was Israel, Truth be told, if God had not chosen these people to be the ones through whom all the world would experience blessing, Israel would deserve the be destroyed as well.

Please look carefully at the text with me. God says in verse 7 that it wasn’t because Israel was better, or bigger, or more technologically advanced than any of the other nations, but they were the smallest! This would be as if a Rhode Island began saying they were going to take over then entire country! If we turned on the news this morning and heard that Rhode Island had declared their independence from the United States and were going to come in and take over the country because God told them to, we would laugh! Who are they compared to the full might of the United States military?

So If Israel is an unrighteous and small people group going to drive out seven nations from before them, why is God doing this?

Complete Chaos

Moses tells Israel that they are going to go into the land and remove seven nations currently occupying the territory. If you’ve had any familiarity with the Bible, you are very aware of how important the number seven is. Seven in the Bible stands for completeness or wholeness, so in depicting seven nations to drive out, Moses is saying that there is complete Chaos in Caanan that God is going to need to remove in order to make the Land holy for His Holy people. You should have Genesis 1 on the brain here. Where God is hovering over the waters, and there was darkness, emptiness, and void of life. God is the one who makes his people and the land holy.

Destroy but Don’t Marry?

God is in the business of ridding the world of sin, transgression, and iniquity. God chose the people of Israel to go and remove the inhabitants of the land to make it a place that was solely devoted to the worship of God. What is interesting, though is even though God says the people are to devote the seven nations to complete destruction, they are not supposed to intermarry with them. This is interesting because if they were totally destroyed, there wouldn’t be anyone for them to marry. While I do believe that the text is calling for war, we see one of the primary purposes for this war. When Israel is told to destroy them utterly, they are given specific instructions to go and make sure all of the idols, altars, pillars, and carved images are burned down. What God seems very keen on is not the destruction of people but the destruction of any kind of false worship. Yes, war means the killing of human beings and I am not saying it doesn’t, but what God is concerned with is that his land is not defiled with anything that would lead people astray from following him. That is His main reason for not intermarrying them, so they don’t serve other gods!

One of the reasons I say this is because all of these nations come up later in the narrative! After years of wars, these nations are still living as a people group in and around Israel.

One main point I want to get across here is that: this was a specific call for Israel to go and make the way for a specific place in history; this is not the justification for some future nation or people to claim the divine authority to wipe out people groups. It is a sad and dark reality for our own country, but we cannot read this text without recognizing the sins our ancestors committed, justifying their actions by claiming that they were sent by God to create a space here in America.

Human Heart

Why would God need to tell people not to follow after other gods? Well, God is very aware of how easily our hearts are turned away from following him. Famously, a Christian from a long time ago named John Calvin said, “... that man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” Almost immediately after being rescued from 400 years of slavery in Egypt, Israel, at the base of the mountain of Sinai where Moses is receiving the tablets with the ten commandments was creating an idol of gold for themselves to worship, in the wilderness wandering they complain about not having enough food and wish to return to Egypt where at least they had something to eat and drink! That picture the Bible is painting of our conditioning is that we are so prone to forget the amazing redemption we experienced.

Many of you at a young age had an experience at a Christian camp, in High School, or at University where you were redeemed by the Lord! You couldn’t believe the spiritual high and freedom from guilt and shame you finally felt and you promised the Lord “never again will I sin against you! I will not follow after false things that lead me astray or take away my heart for you, you and you only Lord will I serve!” How has that been going for everyone? Yeah, I am sure everyone in this room has strayed away from the promises we made. You see, God recognizes that our hearts are prone to wander and stray; we so quickly want to follow after false gods.

If the Israelites allowed the nations and their gods to stay, they may have for a time resisted the temptation to follow after their gods, but what would happen when a particularity dry season came up, and Israel's farmers did not have anything produced that would look over at their neighbors in Canaan and say ‘Well the Canaanites god seems pretty nice, look at the harvest they were able to bring in! Maybe I’ll just follow God and the god of Canaan, God can’t be mad at me for wanting to feed my family can he?’

God is a Holy God who is jealous for his worship, God will not allow any kinds of false worship from his people.

Holy People

So how are God’s comes the doctrine of election. God chose a few out of the many whom he would save. Election is a theme saturated throughout the pages of Scripture. You cannot get far into the Bible without recognizing that God is choosing some and not others. But we have the understand why. Why did God choose these people and why did he call these people to go and wipe out others? Whatever the reason, we understand that it is not because Israel is better than others.

God says in verse 6 that the reason he is choosing Israel is that are a people holy to the Lord God. Holy is a very churchy word to use and one that many of us may have a vague understanding of but not something that we would really be able to explain to someone else. The word translated there as holy is the Hebrew word kadosh. Kadosh means simply “set apart.” To be holy means to be set apart. For example, this is called the “Holy Bible” When we say that, what we mean is this is a book set apart from every other book. This is a special book. When we see items or people in the Bible called Holy, that means they were set apart. Here in Columbia, you may feel that very apparently. Living as a set apart people becomes very apparent when you are speaking with people outside of the church or when you join in social circles of people who think and act in ways much different than you.

Being Holy doesn’t mean having a pompous arrogance about you. Having your nose stuck up in the air and looking down on all of those who are outside of your circles. No, holiness means being set apart for the purpose of blessing others. We read in Genesis 12 that Abraham was chosen to be a blessing to the nations. Israel was chosen to be a light to the nations. Jesus, the holiest person to ever walk to the face of the earth, was not repulsed by sinners or those who are on the margins of society but moved toward them. Holy people move toward those who are different than them and love them with holy love.

Religious Arrogance

Religious hypocrisy is not a new problem and one that God is very aware of. We see this theme come up all over the pages of the Bible. The Prophets of the Old Testament were constantly telling God’s people that they were abusing their holy status and using it to hurt those less fortunate than themselves. Jesus in the New Testament had the harshest words to say to the religious authorities of his day because they did not understand what it meant to be holy. When people begin to think they were picked by God, it can lead to a sense of pride in their heart. ‘God chose me because I am better than other people.’

You see this happen a lot once you begin to experience some kind of immense blessing from God. You think it was because you are just a little better than everyone else. God chose you because you understand things better; you are just more humble than those who don’t believe; you were willing to accept God with your free will when others weren't, and he is rewarding you for your righteousness. We are so prone to think that God chose us because I am better than anyone else, but there is a major problem in thinking that God chose you because you are better than other people. What about your friend next door who doesn’t know Jesus? Maybe you’ve shared the good news with them and they haven’t responded, you may think to yourself why can’t they understand? This seems so plain and east to me. Yet this line of reasoning is to be pitied most.

If you think God chose you because of you, then what your friend needs to do is not pray and ask God for forgiveness, what they really need to do is just become more like you. You are the standard of moral perfection in life, or at least the minimum bar they need to achieve to be loved by God. But if you recognize that you are loved by God because he out of his shear grace loved you first, that the reason you believed is only that the Holy Spirit moved in your heart and enlightened your mind in the knowledge of Christ, renewed your will, and persuaded you to embrace Jesus freely offered in the gospel, you have no reason to look down on your friend! The only difference is that God hasn’t done that to them yet; it is not that they haven’t tried hard enough or that they haven’t heard enough; it is that God needs to work in their lives. That’s why we pray for our neighbors and coworkers to come to know Jesus. God has to move in their heart just like he did in yours to believe. God did not give us grace once we’ve proven to be holy enough; he gives us grace in order to be holy at all!

The Blessings of Eden

So we are left wondering how do I, with a hard heart that is a constant factory of idols, but with the Holy Spirit, be a holy person? One of the most repeated commands in the Bible is to remember. God‘s mighty acts in history have been written down for us so that we can be reminded again and again of what he has done for us. God is the covenant-keeping God. When God makes a promise, it is sealed with his name on it. Nothing in the world can keep God from keeping his promises.

The fruit of God driving our surrounding nations and making a holy people is a restored Eden. If you look at verses 12-16, they describe what will happen if the people listen. In verse 12 there, when it says that because you listened, the word listen is the exact same Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6 in the Shema. The word Shema means to hear or listen, but it doesn’t just mean simply hearing words, just having audio go into your ears, it is a command that requires action. It is like when a parent tells a child, listen to me. The parent is telling the child listen to me but they are also saying I am telling you to do exactly what I am about to say.

Heaven on Earth

The blessing of listening to God is a restored Eden. Moses says that because the people of Israel listen to God, they are going to experience the most intense blessing of all the nations! They may not be the best of all nations, but they were to be the most blessed! We see Eden restored with the garden mandate to being fruitful and multiplying, the earth producing crops and livestock beyond their wildest dreams, and sickness and disease being eradicated from the land.

The Problem

The Problem, though is that Israel never listened to God completely; they did intermarry with the nations, they did follow after foreign gods, and they were ultimately exiled from the land by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Israel needed what we need. Israel needed someone to come and step in on their behalf and be all that they were called to be and yet ultimately failed to be. What they needed was someone who could keep all of God’s commands, someone who would not succumb to the temptation to following after false gods, someone who would bring about the blessings of Eden back on earth.

What they needed and who we need is Jesus. Jesus is the one who claimed that he was fulfilling all of the Law and Prophets, Jesus is the one who is rescuing us form our self-righteousness. Jesus is the answer we are looking for when it comes to war and death. Death was the punishment for sin which we see plainly in God’s judgment, but God took this more seriously than we ever will. God was showing the world that it was only through the cross that the final payment for sin could be made. He took that so seriously came and died for us himself. God says I chose you because I love you. I love you because I love you. Your deepest longing to be loved is met in the person of Jesus. Jesus chose you from before the foundations of the world only because he loved you, and he promises that one day when he returns, he is bringing Heaven back with Him

It is because Jesus chose us and took on the sin that all the world deserves, we can sing.

No guilt in life, no fear in death This is the power of Christ in me From life's first cry to final breath Jesus commands my destiny

Please pray with me