The following is Pastor Nate’s teaching transcription from Calvary Monterey’s 4/20/21 Tuesday Night Service. We apologize for any transcription inaccuracies.
Exodus chapter 23 verse 1 begins, “you shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit siding with the many so as to pervert justice nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.” Now, here as we open up our study of Exodus chapter 23, I'll remind you that we're really concluding a three-part series here on Exodus 21, 22, and 23. In Exodus chapter 20, God gave the 10 commandments to the people of Israel. He gave them the law code. But in the 10 commandments, these were the overarching guides, laws for the people of Israel. There wasn't a lot of “if you break these laws, here's the consequences.” There wasn't a lot of information to help establish a judicial system in the rudimentary Israelites people.
Laws Regarding Justice
And so, God gave them chapter 21, 22 and 23 giving them laws that would govern their civil day-to-day experiences in life, and we've been trying to go through these, I guess, at a fairly slow pace to try to understand both what their laws meant and where, but then, also to attempt to apply them if we can to our lives today and as Christians. And as I've mentioned before, I don't think it's wise to just take these laws and try to appropriate them into our governmental or political situation. There are just so many cultural things that are very different in our modern nations than in the nation of Israel not to mention the fact that they were, as a nation, God's chosen people and no other nation has ever been that in God's sight.
Now, the gospel is for all nations, not a particular nation. But there are elements of these laws that I think, if we work hard, we can glean and be blessed by what God would say to us today. So, today, we're going to look at some of the final laws in this section regarding legal justice.
Now, as we look at these laws about legal justice, I should say that it's hard to know exactly or precisely how they would execute some of these things. We're going to read about witnesses and trials and testimony and all of that. But what we don't have is a hard and fast description on what their judicial system looked like. Were there courts? Were there judges, and all of that? Maybe, all they needed was the advice that Jethro had already given to organize the nation with Moses at the top giving and teaching the word of God that God revealed to him on Mount Sinai and then for there to be judges that were capable to leave tens, hundreds, thousands and to kind of preside over people in that way or maybe in the years later, they became more organized with it.
That's really not the focus of the text. Concept though is that, hey, I've redeemed you. God would say to them, "You are to center yourselves around me, worship me, and here is the way that you should live." And I think when you frame it that way, this has much less of a legalistic kind of bent or tone to it to borrow from our modern Christian terminology. We might think of anything, any requirement, any law as legalistic.
But if you really think about what has happened here in the book of Exodus, God redeemed them so they could worship him. And now, he's showing them how to live. There's really not much that's a legalistic about that. So, now to look at this first section, I'll remind you of the ninth commandment on the second tablet, Exodus 20 verse 16, you shall not bear false witness about your neighbor. And that's really what we read about in those first three verses. You can't spread a false report. You're not to lie. You're not to bend justice according to your purposes and your will.
1 “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. 2 You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, 3 nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.
So, let's think about a few things in these first three verses. First of all, let's think about the concept that all throughout the Old Testament, not just here, but also in the New Testament as well, slander is held out as a vicious sin. Here at verse 1, you shall not spread a false report. The idea is that, yeah, in court, you shouldn't give false testimony. But you should carry that principle into everyday life.
Colossians 3 verse 8 says that we must put away all these things, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk. That's easy to think about anger and wrath, malice being pushed to the side. But slander also needs to be put off as well. Now, in this concept, in these first three verses, about making sure that they did not give false testimony again to not bend justice according to their desires, their fleshly desires, he says that there's a temptation. And the temptation he mentions in two ways, in verse 2, that you shall not fall in with the many to do evil, and that you should not side with the many.
There's something about the group mentality that influences someone when they're getting ready to testify or when they're getting ready to be part of court proceedings so to speak. You might think of this exemplified in our modern era when a jury is selected for an infamous crime, if it's been written about, if it's been blogged about, if it's been talked about, ad nauseam in the popular culture, a lot of times, they try to find jury members who haven't had their opinions tainted by consuming the information that the crowd has produced.
And I think also, in our modern times, there are narratives that the crowd communicates about all kinds of different elements in life that once somebody grabs onto them, it becomes difficult for them to be impartial in their judgments, impartial in their decisions. So, in a sense, there's a concept here of just taking things on a case-by-case basis and being willing to go through the nuanced conversations to find out what is just and find out what is right.
But because the crowd so often moves in a very direct place, we've got to make sure that we're not just following the crowd mentality, but that we're actually following the truth of the matter, and I'm sure that it's not hard for you to imagine. You could just hop on any social media platform these days, find the most trending hashtag or movement, and you can just see a people who've never thought about an issue before. But they are right. They're moving with the crowd in whatever the crowd mentality is saying without asking many questions.
And many times, those questions aren't even given space to breathe in the crowd mentality. It's just think like the crowd, or else don't speak at all. So, it's like a flood of dissipation, in a sense, to borrow peter's words in I Peter chapter 4.
Now, interestingly enough in this first little movement, God tells them, "Hey, don't spread a false report. Don't join with the wicked to be a malicious witness to kind of contrive a malicious or wicked scheme." Don't fall in with the many, with the crowd to do evil to get an evil verdict or to pervert justice. But verse 3 is very interesting. It's so troublesome to some people that some translators have even tried to change the wording at verse 3. But it's just not something that you can do with any real faithfulness.
Verse 3 says, "Nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit." This is surprising because the concept here is that, of course, all throughout the Old Testament, I mean God's the one who initiates the idea of taking care of those who are in poverty and will even read of laws today that deal with the caring of those who are poor in Israelite society at that time. But nonetheless, God still warns, you can't be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. God backed this up again in Leviticus chapter 19.
There, he said in verse 15, you shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great. But in righteousness, you shall judge your neighbor. So, there's a tendency, I think we'd all confess it, to defer to the great. But he also says, "You can't be partial to the poor." That tendency can also exist to not ask the difficult questions and make sure that if the poor have committed a sin or a crime, it's not right to cover it up just because of their status in life. So, you've got to watch out for the partiality on both sides of things, well, all the while being a person who cares for and takes care of the poor. Okay.
4 “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.
But let's go on into verse 4 and 5, and read further into this Old Testament law. He says, "If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him." If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it. You shall rescue it with him." Okay, now, this little section of the law. What you have are some case studies, some examples. It's not just like, "Hey, if you find your enemy's donkey wandering, you got to help that donkey." But if you find your donkey's cow wandering, you don't need to worry about that. No, this is a principle that would carry forward into his other possessions.
And you can almost imagine the humor of the scene. There you are, a legal adversary with somebody that's likely the idea of what enemy means in this passage or in this context, this legal adversary that you have. And there you are, minding your own business. You're in your field. You're maybe thinking about this conflict that you have with someone else, and you're wondering about the future decision that's going to be made in this court case.
And lo and behold, their donkey or their ox begins wandering lost through your field. Now, you can imagine the temptation. The temptation would be to ignore this animal, allow your enemy so to speak to suffer, or to do something worse. But here, God says, "No, if that were to happen then, what you're going to do is you're to take that lost ox or donkey, and you're to bring them back to your enemy." This animal now is your responsibility. You must care for it.
There's a couple of things that are interesting about this law from God. First of all, there's no way that this could really be enforced in any kind of way. How would you demonstrate or prove that someone had broken this law? It's kind of an honor system kind of moment just saying to the people of Israel, "Hey, on your own, by yourself, you must be a person of integrity."
But secondarily, you could also see the possibility that court-based disputes get solved because of this kind of generosity, care, love, and concern for your neighbor. You almost imagine these two crusty hardened farmers who are at odds with each other. One, brings his wayward ox to the other who's lost his ox, and they look at each other, and they realize, "Now, what we're fighting about is so silly," and they reconcile right there on the spot.
In a sense, what we're seeing here in the Old Testament amongst God's people is the Matthew 7 verse 12 golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to love your enemies. Sometimes, we'll say this is a concept only found in the New Testament that Jesus introduced in the sermon on the mount, for example. But here, I think we can see it even it foreshadowed there or in part in the Old Testament law to love, to care for your enemy. He says in verse 6, "You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous for I will not acquit the wicked, and you shall take no bribe for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a sojourner, you know the heart of a sojourner for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt."
6 “You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. 7 Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. 8 And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. 9 “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
Now, here again, he talks about making sure that you're not showing partiality in your judgments. He says in verse 6, "You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit." And, of course, that is a temptation to deny the poor justice because of their social status or to take advantage of who they are, and maybe their lack of resources in combating their charge.
Then, he also says there in verse 7 that you've got to make sure that you don't kill the innocent and the righteous with a false charge. And then, he warns about the accepting of a bribe, making this bold statement that a bribe blinds the clear-sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. And I think it's not hard for us to look out even at our modern society and see moments where the presence of the influence of money has clouded somebody's judgment.
I mean you can even look at modern corporations who say they are taking a stand on various social issues. But they stand to benefit greatly financially for those stands who then will hop into an international relationship that also benefits them financially, but with governments or corporations that are doing great harm to their people simultaneously.
So, it appears that money can just cloud a person's vision of making a just decision. It just clouds a person's insight and wisdom. And this must have been a big issue in that near eastern ancient culture because over and over again, God will correct this kind of behavior. Over and over again, he'll warn about a bribe. And I think it's obvious that wealth can even influence the judicial process today. Somebody with great means can hire the best of the best lawyers, assemble a legal team to defend them, and someone without means is at the mercy of a public defender.
But this is good for us to reflect on that money can easily corrupt the best of God's people, and I think a good practice is just to be generous from the very beginning, set that tone early on in your life, and I think you'll be guarded and protected from the influence that money can have upon your soul. Money is a good thing that human beings by the innovation that God put in them created so that we could buy, sell, trade, and all of that.
I, for one, am very thankful I don't have to grow my own corn, but that I can pay money to buy the food that I need, very thankful for that system that we've been able to make. That's good. But it can influence evil on us if we have a love for it that is inappropriate.
Now, verse 9 before we move on in our passage, you've got to notice a fresh. God says something that he had already said back in chapter 22 in a different kind of way. He told the people of Israel, "You can't oppress a sojourner because that's what you were in Egypt." Again, God wants the people of Israel to remember who they were and where they came from, and to make sure that in their exercise of justice, they remember the unjust situation that they were in, in Egypt.
This should help them because they were treated unfairly to want to treat visitors or pilgrims or aliens in their country as fairly as possible. This might lift a beautiful principle to some of you that are listening to this today that whatever injustice you've experienced in your life previously, perhaps allowing the Lord to redeem that so that it can be used for great good in the future. That's kind of the concept that God is holding out for these Israelites. Look, you were treated very unfairly by the Egyptians. You know what it's like to endure that kind of abuse.
And so, don't repeat that abuse on others. Instead, be good to the sojourner. Break that cycle and do something brand new. So, we have, of course, the ministry of Jesus, the great redeemer, who redeems the events in our lives, of things of our lives, and to consider that the injustice or abuse that we've experienced in the past can be used for great good in the future. It's just an amazing concept that puts a purpose to some of the pain perhaps that we've experienced in life. We have to remember where we come from. But also, use it for God's glory in the future.
Laws Regarding Holy Celebrations
10 “For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, 11 but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard. 12 “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed. 13 “Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.
All right. Those are some of the laws concerning treating each other justly. But let's move on to see what God says about the Sabbath and some various festivals of worship in verse 10 and following. He says, "For six years, you shall sow your land and gather in its yield. For the seventh year, you shall let it rest and lives follow, that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat, you shall do likewise with your vineyard and with your olive orchard. Six days, you shall do your work. But on the seventh day, you shall rest that your ox and your donkey may have rest and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed. Pay attention to all that I've said to you to make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips."
Now, there's a couple things that I want to mention before really plunging into this next section because what God is doing now is he's telling the people of Israel, "This is how I want you to organize your worship." And the idea here is that they're not yet in the Promised Land. So, embedded within all of this is the concept that we're going to make it. We're going into the Promised Land where we'll have to allow our farmland to rest, where we'll be able to take a Sabbath. We'll have a location that we go to worship that we place the house of the Lord that God gives us to build, and we will pilgrimage there three times each year.
God's going to talk about each one of those things that would fill the people of Israel with hope. Hey, if he's talking about these things that we are going to do, then apparently, God is going to bring us into the land. And for God, the keeping of the Sabbath seems to have been a very important thing because not only was it in the 10 commandments. But over and over again, God repeats to the people of Israel the keeping of this thing called the Sabbath. And as we just read, it reflects more than just every seven days, but even every seven years, and that even will be developed further as the law continues to unfold.
But this was the big sign or one of the big signs that the people of Israel were different that they belong to God. When you would, from afar, see a whole nation resting every seventh day, you would wonder why. And the people of Israel, this was their way of expressing out loud and with their actions that they belong to God. And, of course, on this side of the cross, we understand as Christians that there are things that you can see from the outside that demonstrate who we are on the inside. There are changes to our external life what we do, what we say, how we live, what we watch, what we consume. These things are different because what has happened to us internally. And all through this passage, God is preparing the people of Israel because one of the greatest dangers that they would experience is the worship of other gods. And so, all through this passage, God is trying to preserve for them the worship of God alone. And so, he's trying to set up the system. And then, even just directly, don't worship other god. We're going to read those kind of sentiments all throughout this passage.
The Sabbath
Now, this first little section we read about the Sabbath, it's actually the Sabbath of the land every seventh year. And this is an extension again of that commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, Exodus chapter 20 verse 8. What they were to do was to let the land rest every seventh year. Now, you can only imagine the faith that it would take to do that. I mean can you imagine every seventh year taking a year off. I'm sure they had other means of gaining or securing an income. I'm sure they were working and all of that.
But they'd take a field each year, and they'd let it rest. The possibility was there, of course, that you could have multiple fields. And every seventh year, you would rotate those fields out. But again, the idea would take faith to allow the land to rest. It was actually what was best for the land because they weren't yet an advanced agrarian society with so many of the tricks and concepts that we've unearthed in our modern times to get the most out of produce or the most out of soil. They were kind of at the mercy of what the land would provide for them. These weren't even crops that they were going to be planting near the Nile River like they've known back in the land of Egypt. This was going to be Israel, the land of Canaan, a new kind of territory.
So, God knew that it would be good for the land to have moments where it just lay fallow and nothing was done to it. And so, he prescribed for them that it would happen once every seven years. But just imagine the trust and the faith that it would take to live that way. Say, "God, I trust that you are going to provide for and defend me." Now, those of you who know your Bibles, you know that this command from God is the command that determined the length of their captivity in Babylon so many years later. They refused to obey God in this command for 490 years which meant that divide that by seven, there were 70 years that the people of Israel had not let the land lie fallow.
And so, when God allowed them to be taken away into captivity to discipline them and judge them for their long rebellious tone and attitude toward him, he declared through the prophet Jeremiah that they'd be gone for a period of 70 years so that the land could get the rest that they refused to give it because of their disobedience.
Now, one thing I did want to point out to you is that there's something interesting here as to the why of letting the land rest. There are other places where God says that the why of Sabbath is so that they could demonstrate who they were in God's sight, that they were God's people. But here, we learned that the motivation, we read it all through this passage, is so that the poor could eat the idea being that they might even plant a little bit for themselves or they would just eat whatever the land produced wild without any preparation of the land.
And that also, the animals, the wild beasts would come and eat whatever the land produced that was kind of left over from the previous year's crop. So, the idea here is not Godward directed, but neighbor directed, manward directed, or even just the animal kingdom being ministered to as a result of their obedience. Now, he then declares and makes sure that we know in verse 12 that they were to continue in not just the every seven years of Sabbath, but every seven days a Sabbath as well so that he says in verse 12, "Everyone, ox, donkey, servants, foreigners, everyone could be refreshed." Like I said, all of this is communicated by God because it demonstrates his care for humans, for animals, for the land. He's concerned about all the resources that he's put at our disposal and wanted his people to be good stewards of them.
And then, you have there in verse 13. Pay attention all that I've said to you, make no mention of the names of other gods nor let it be heard on your lips. This is the idea you are a worshipping people. So, this is why you keep the Sabbath. This is the root the foundation of who you are.
Now, I wanted to just point out that this foundational element that they were Sabbath keepers who had no other gods before God that they worship God alone. This actually would enable them to be well qualified and suited to create a just community or a just environment. This is important for us to understand, I think, in our modern time because when somebody rejects the creator God, inevitably, an idol sits in the place that God should be. And once someone becomes an idolater, it's very difficult for them to or impossible in a sense for them to really give true justice to other human beings because part of the way that we're able to administer justice is by believing there's a creator, and that other human beings are fellow image bearers in God's sight.
But once you detach yourself from a creator, tribalism eventually floods in. You create some kind of idol perhaps, an idol of identity, an idol of greed or money, or power, these idols then become the pursuit. And they always taint a human being's pursuit of justice.
So, the idea is that for us, the Bible over and over again tells us to be a people who are concerned about justice. But the second that quest is undertaken detached from a framework that's not compatible with the Bible detached from who God is that he's made us, that he's created us, then we're in deep trouble. So, we've got to retain the vision of who God is that helped the people of Israel initially to be good at dispensing justice to the people around them because they realized, "I've been made by a creator. You've been made by a creator. You're made in God's image, and there's nothing better about me. There's nothing better about you. We are one together because God made us, and therefore because of who you are in God's sight, I want to give you justice, and I want to treat you fairly." All right.
So, it's interesting. Here, God gives the Sabbath to them or reminds them of the Sabbath so that they would be protected from the false Gods who could come in and just kind of pollute this whole thing. I mean the second they started worshiping false gods, lives were in danger, so to speak. And so, they had to watch out for the God of prosperity or self or pleasure and just pursue the God who made them.
The Festivals
14 “Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. 15 You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. 16 You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. 17 Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God.
Now, to continue this theme of worship, he says in verse 14, "Three times in the year, you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened bread as I commanded you. You shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it, you came out of Egypt, none shall appear before me empty-handed. You should keep the Feast of Harvest of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of each year when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor three times in the year, shall all your males appear before the Lord God."
Now, here, God describes the feasts that they would partake. Again, they're just a wandering people at this point. They aren't yet in the land of Israel. They haven't yet really become a nation. So, they've got no place to go three times each year. But once they went into the Promised Land, this is what they were supposed to do, and I don't know. For me, I think about these feasts, the men and many commentators believe they presumably would bring their families with them going to the house of God to worship the Lord three times each year.
I just love that concept, and I hope and pray in the millennial reign of Christ that we'll get to partake of these particular festivals. But they had three of them. The first that he mentions is the feast of unleavened bread where they would remember the Exodus itself because they had to eat bread that was not leavened on that night. The feast of harvest which happened 50 days after seven weeks, after the feast of unleavened bread. We know of it as Pentecost in the New Testament.
And there, they celebrated the harvest that God brought for them. And then, the feast of in gathering held in the early fall, sometime in the September or October timeframe where they commemorated the fact that they wandered in the wilderness for such a long amount of time, but that God provided for them. He was faithful to them during that season. And all three of these feasts, in one degree or another, reminded the people that God provided for them, that God took care of them, and that God provided for them, and this is a great thing for God's people to remember today, that God provides for us.
18 “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning. 19 “The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
And so, three times each year, the men would pursue the Lord in this way, and I do believe it's important for God's men to be Godly, to pursue him. I think it changes everything when the men of God behave as God has called them to be. Then, he says in verse 18, he said, "You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened or let the fat of my feasts remain until the morning. The best of the first fruits of your ground, you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk."
Now, here, you have a cluster of what appear to be some pretty odd restrictions in their worship. The idea that they want to eat anything leavened makes sense when you consider that it connects to the Passover and the unleavened bread of that evening. Giving to God the best of the first fruits of the ground would be a real test for the people of Israel. Would they give? Would they give God the best? And, of course, he would know, he would see if they gave to him the best. He tells them these things are to happen when you come into the house of the Lord which, of course, had not even yet been designed let alone built for the people of Israel.
But it's kind of a bi-fake concept. And then, there's this very odd restriction that they're not to boil a young goat in its mother's milk. And scholars just go on and on about the potential of what this might mean. And the bottom line, one of the best scholars I read said is we really just don't know what exactly is being said here. It does seem to connect to some kind of pagan worship ritual from about that time. And the people of Israel were not to go there. They weren't to find their styles of worship from the pagan world or the false religions around them.
Epilogue: God's Promises
20 “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. 21 Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. 22 “But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
Now, to conclude this section, chapter 21, 22, and 23, kind of the law-giving section, a God then closes by promising them his presence on their way to the Promised Land. He says in verse 20, "Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries."
His Guidance
So, here, God mentions to the people of Israel this angel who is going to go before them and be with them on their journey. Now, this angel was actually there in Exodus chapter 3 when Moses was called at the burning bush. He was involved in Israel's redemption in chapter 14 when they came out of Egypt initially. And here, God presents him as a guide to the people of Israel on their journey on the way to the land of Canaan.
And this angel is likely some kind of guardian watching over the people fighting for them. It's interesting because the angel when he moves, same things happen as when the cloud moves. And the same things happen when the ark moves. The power, the presence of God is present. All three of them move. And, sometimes, they move together in tandem. They are tightly bound together.
Now, there are some who think, of course, that this angel is just simply that, special angel designated the people of Israel during this time. But many believe, if not most believe, that this angel is pre-incarnate Jesus Christ present, the second member of the triune Godhead with his people, with the people of God. And part of the reason for thinking in that way is because this figure does things that are so tightly bound and wound up in who God is himself as I already said.
When the ark or the cloud moved, definite emblems of God the same kind of things happened as when the angel moved. And many times, they would actually move together. He says in verse 21 that you're to obey his voice. This is something that they were to do for God as well to obey God. They were not to rebel against him in verse 21.
He said, "If you do rebel, he will not pardon your transgression." This angel, responsible for forgiving God's people. This is a stern warning. This is a kind of thing that sounds like something God would do. God is the one who pardons. God is the one who forgives. God is the one who extends mercy, and I should say as an aside that these kind of warnings, those severe to the people of Israel hardly ever come to pass.
God never fully carries out the threat or cuts them off. He eventually gives them mercy and does forgive them. Then, in verse 21 he also says, "My name is in him So, the name of God is tightly bound to this figure. And then again, in verse 22, obey his voice and do all that I say. So, who is it that they're to follow? The angel or God? Again, the two are tightly bound together. And then, in verse 25, he says, "Serve the Lord your God. He will bless you, and he will give you certain blessings as a result of walking in the light."
So, personally I believe this is the Lord saying, "I'm going to go with you. And the way I'm going to go with you is by the second person of the trinity walking with you and walking before you in this life." Jesus said to us, the church, that we're to go into all the world and make disciples. And lo, I'm with you always even to the end of the age.
You see, the people of Israel, they were supposed to go to a nation, Israel, the land of Canaan, we are to go to all nations. As they went to make a nation, the Lord was with them. As we go to all nations to make disciples, the Lord is with us. So, Jesus walking with us, empowering us, protecting us, defending us. I want you to let that concept be firm within your heart. And what I'm trying to allude to is not just a sappy sentimentalism that says, "If you're a Christian, he's with you." I mean that is certainly true.
What I'm trying to say is they were, as they went to the right place, experiencing the presence of this angel of the Lord, and I think as we are going in the right place with an aim in life at making disciples, we will also experience the power and the strength the presence of the Lord.
So, is he with us at all times no matter what we're doing as Christians? Yes. In a sense, that is true the spirit residing within us. But the power of Christ the enabling of Christ, I think, is found for those who are spending their time devoted to the direction of gospel preaching disciple making here on earth the work of the Lord. Jesus said, "Pray for laborers for the harvest is plentiful. But the laborers are few."
His Judgment
23 “When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, 24 you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
And that so saddens my heart because I just know that those who refuse to be laborers are not experiencing the grace of his power in these kinds of ways, and it's exciting to have Jesus Christ joining with you in life and ministry. He says in verse 23, "When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out you shall not bow down to their Gods nor serve them nor do as they do. But you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
Now, when God says that he's going to block them out, there definitely is much violence when they go into the Promised Land. And we'll talk about that, and I have talked about that already in the past. We'll talk about it when we get to those sections in the future. But there is also the possibility that this did not mean a complete elimination either.
As you read forward in the Old Testament even after they came into the land of promise, there were Jebusites. There were Hittites who quite obviously were not blotted out but still in existence. What it was, was the worship and the practices of the gods of these nations that were strictly forbidden by God. So, he's just giving them this perpetual warning to not bow down to these Gods. You shall have no other Gods before me, is the prime commandment.
And in the book of Judges, you see what happens to the people of Israel when they forget this command from God, and they do partake of the gods and the nations around them. They eventually become slaves of the nations around them. They lose their effectiveness, witness and power. And they become subservient until they finally get desperate and cry out to God and he mercifully sends them over and over again, deliverer after deliverer.
His Blessing
25 You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. 26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.
But what God says here is you got to destroy all of that stuff. You got to break their pillars which might have been worship symbols, maybe even stones that were meant to signify male fertility. You got to destroy those. Your fertility, your health, your longevity, your prosperity, your fruitfulness does not come from that kind of worship. He says in verse 25, "You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless you, your bread and your water. And I will take the sickness away from you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days."
Now, this is a very Old Testament kind of promise for the people of Israel. Walk with God, and you're going to experience great health. I mean obviously, they still got sick and died, each one of them. But God would miraculously work amongst them as they were obedient to him. Now, in our era, we, of course, don't have that same promise. We will suffer many afflictions the same kind of afflictions that everyone else deals with along with the afflictions that are unique to being believers in Jesus Christ.
His Help
27 I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. 28 And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.
But as we walk with the Lord, we are sure to experience the blessing of God. And ultimately, a day will come where the kinds of blessings that he typifies here for Israel on earth, we will experience eternally with him. He says verse 27, "I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you, and I will send hornets before you which will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites and the Hittites from before you."
Now, likely when he says that he would send the hornets before them, we have no record in the historical storytelling books of Israel that talk about literal hornets, but three times throughout the Old Testament. He talks about going before them with hornets.
In fact, in Joshua 24 verse 12, God said, "And I sent the hornet before you which drove them out before you." So, God did this. So, perhaps, it was something that happened before they arrived at these various towns, literal swarms of hornets descending upon a people driving them out from a place because they just determined, "Well, this is an uninhabitable place. We can't be here any longer."
But many scholars think that the hornet is just another way of talking about the terror that God said he would send before them. There would be some kind of desperation that comes into the hearts of the people and many of them would flee from the people of Israel. Various promises from God said that one would chase a thousand, and two would chase 10,000. So, the idea being that God would place this fear amongst the people that they were going to.
His Security
29 I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. 31 And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.
But again this is the power of God working with them as they obeyed him. He says in verse 29, "I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the lamb become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land." And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the sea of the philistines and from the wilderness to the Euphrates for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.
Now, a couple of interesting things. First of all, God sets the loose boundaries or dividing lines of the nation of Israel. He talks about the points of the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, from the wilderness to the Euphrates. And though it is debated, most seem to land on the idea that this was never fully realized by the people of Israel. There might have been like a temporary wishful hope during Solomon's reign that this had come to pass. But it's still not yet fully retained in Israel.
And I think the hope is that this will be a future experience and perhaps the millennial reign of Christ that these boundaries will be fully realized, and that they will fulfill the potential that God had for them. But here's the thing I want you to fixate on devotionally in your heart today. He says, "I'm not going to give it to you in one year. It's going to be little by little over time. It's going to take a while." You see, the land if they had just gone in and God sent the hornet and everybody vacated the land, the land in a few years' time would have just been overrun by nature.
So, God allowed the population to remain, and then little by little is Israel grew and expanded, they would drive out the other inhabitants who would move elsewhere because this was the land that God had promised for his people. Now, think what you will about that concept addressed before, we'll address it again, what I want you to think about today is the gradual nature of the victory that God gave.
Little by little he said to them in verse 30, "Little by little, I will drive them out before you." This is part of the fun, I think, of the Christian life. To walk with Jesus, to not experience all the victory on day one, but to have to desperately press into him, cling to him so that little by little, he can win the victory in our lives. I think this is good for us. It keeps us dependent upon God. It keeps us praying. It keeps us seeking him because we know we need more of him so that we can have more victory growth, sanctification, transformation in our lives.
32 You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”
And then our final verses today, he says in verse 32, "You shall make no covenant with them, and their Gods. They shall not dwell in your land lest they make you sin against me for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.
One last exhortation not to give in to the false gods of their day. And I would give one last exhortation in our study today. Don’t give in to the false gods of prosperity or a major false god of our time, the worship of the self. Don't give in to the false God of power. Don't give in to the false God of personal pride. Don't give in to these false gods for they surely will disappoint. God bless you, church. I'll see you again next week.